Last week’s Port of Karachi’s containership collision has made the entire shipping industry more aware of the safety issues that are still endangering people and cargo when vessels berth at ports.
With Karachi Port Trust and Hapag-Lloyd — the container shipping line involved in the incident — still conducting their investigations, commentary on what may have gone wrong is proving scarce, with many professionals apprehensive about speaking out.
It will be down to the ship’s crew and quay-side witnesses to form a full picture of what happened (view the video here to form your own opinion).
In ‘Ship Berthing Incidents: Revealing the Reality’, a Port Technology technical paper by Laurence Jones, Risk Assessment Director at TT Club, he writes that ship berthing incidents are “all too common at ports globally.”