Explainer: How the Suez Canal ship was freed

[Music] the world was gripped by the dramatic recovery of a container ship that became lodged in the suez canal the transit for about 15 of global shipping traffic the evergiven was stuck on the channel for almost a week causing a huge buildup of vessels around the waterway let's look at how the giant container was freed refloating the evergiven was a monumental challenge and it all came down to physics says peter burdowski the ceo of pascalis baskalis owns the dutch firm smith salvage which assisted in dislodging the ship it's all about physics and most physical laws are not that difficult you could say but the trick is to make them work for you and not against you and that's what we did the 430 yard long ship was jammed diagonally across the southernmost stretch of the canal at least eight tugboats were used to push and pull it away from the banks with the help of the ship's own winches diggers cleared earth at the ship's bow and two dredges were deployed dredging sand surrounding the vessel only had a minor impact sources said ballast water which is used to help stabilize ships was offloaded too amid efforts to refloat the ship we had a plan b involving water injection under the vessel because with the digger yeah you can you can scrap a little bit of soil around the vessel but not under the vessel uh the same holds for the cutter dredger they used so again you dig some some soil away beside the the vessel but not under so what we more or less did is we used the water power that was in the canal with the returning tides to push the vessel while we were pulling it and the combination of the two as we hoped at the end of the day did the trick [Music] smith salvage has been involved in high profile rescues before it assisted with the costa concordia disaster in 2012 and raised the car carrier baltic ice in 2015 after it sank near the port of rotterdam location in this instance was a major factor it took nearly a week to loosen the vessel the delay was down to waiting for two tow vessels that were heavy enough rare in the region to reach the site the most important characteristics of the environment is is that it it's in relative isolation like if something like this happens at the port of antwerp or the port of rotterdam where we've done these jobs you have vessels just around the corner you have crane vessels even around the corner there are so many possibilities you can use so you can optimize plan a b c d uh op until z so to speak so um the difficulty is you you're really in the middle of nowhere stuck with a vessel and no equipment nearby so that that's the big challenge really

Channel: Reuters

Views: 1,019,962

Keywords: reuters, business, finance, news, politics, top news, headlines, breaking news, news today, bloomberg, thomson reuters, trump, biden, reuters youtube, Joe Biden, Suez canal cleared, Massive ship blocks suez canal, Suez canal freed, Suez ship freed, Latest news on Suez canal blockage, Suez canal open, Aerial view of suez canal, Ever given freed, the boat blocking the suez canal, Ever given, Peter Berdowski, How was the Suez Canal ship freed

Id: ZW7TLcs5XXQ

Length: 3min 12sec (192 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021