"from The Depths Of Disaster: Maritime Law Attorneys And Fire-related Injury Claims"

 "from The Depths Of Disaster: Maritime Law Attorneys And Fire-related Injury Claims" - Wow... A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter lifts a crew from the Golden Ray, a 656-foot car carrier that capsized in St. Simons Sound near Brunswick, Georgia in 2019. Photo: US Coast Guard

From the Suez-blocking Ever Given to the Costa Concordia cruise ship that hit a reef, what exactly do you do when a ship goes down – and how do you prevent catastrophic pollution?

"from The Depths Of Disaster: Maritime Law Attorneys And Fire-related Injury Claims"

Disaster strikes in the moonlit waters of the Atlantic Ocean at 3:24 a.m. MS Seascape - A 200-meter, six-story cargo ship carrying 4,000 new electric cars pushes into a coral reef. The ship comes to a screeching halt, begins to roll violently to the side, and capsizes on a rock a few kilometers from the harbor.

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The Coast Guard receives an emergency call. Helicopters lift the flailing crew members to safety, while support boats unload cargo that has not already fallen into the sea. This is urgent - the lithium-ion batteries in electric cars are at risk of exploding, and most vehicles are kept in storage. If a fire breaks out, the ship will turn into a giant pressure cooker.

Although our MS Seascape is a hypothetical vessel, her condition is not unusual. In 2021, 54 large ships either sank, ran aground or caught fire, and these behemoths are more likely to cause disaster when things go wrong.

There are ships lost 3m beneath the waves, and with new technology finally allowing us to discover them, Guardian Seascape dedicates a series to what has been found: hidden histories, hidden treasures and the lessons they teach. From glimpses of storied wrecks like the Titanic and Ernest Shackleton's doomed Endurance, to slave ships like the Clotilda confronting our troubled history or Spanish galleons covered in plundered South American gold, shipwrecks are time capsules and clues to who we are. .

But they are also ocean actors, hosting large colonies of marine life. They are victims of the same threats that the ocean faces: invasive species eat their trunks, and acidification slowly causes them to disintegrate. Accidents are mirrors that show us not only who we are, but also what our future holds in a rapidly warming globe.

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Photographing this debris has been a boon to science, shedding light on a part of the planet shrouded in mystery. "If shipwrecks are the sirens that drive us into the deep, they encourage us to explore the planet's true final frontier," says James Delgado of shipwreck Search Inc. "A border we don't know much about. "

Abandoning ships is rarely an option. The risks of oil and fuel spills mean that it is now standard practice to salvage them and repair any damage to the environment. But the costs are astronomical: The Costa Concordia, which ran aground near Genoa, Italy in 2012, was the most expensive wreck removal in history, costing more than $1 billion and taking 350 rescue workers over nearly three years.

There is no cookie-cutter approach to rescue: each operation will vary depending on location, water depth, weather, equipment and environmental sensitivity.

The risk posed by the MS Seascape, loaded with potentially explosive car batteries, is not unlike that of the 200-metre Felicity Ace, which burst into flames in the mid-Atlantic before sinking unsalvageable at 10,000 feet: 281 are suspected. EVs on board may have caused or at least accelerated the fire.

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To avoid this fate, the local rescue company intervenes, one of several tens of operators around the world preparing to rush to the scene of a sea accident. His first goal is to save the ship and return it to service.

The Felicity Ace, which caught fire before sinking more than 60 miles off the Azores, was damaged by fire. Photo: Portuguese Navy/Reuters

The location of the vessel has a big impact on how quickly the transaction takes place. The Rena, a container ship docked off the coast of New Zealand, had to wait several weeks for equipment to arrive from Singapore - during which time the hull fell apart.

At this stage it is too early to tell how much impact the MS Seascape hull has had. In calmer conditions in the morning, rescuers follow a skirted boom around the ship to catch any fuel and hazardous waste.

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Meanwhile, the specialist team begins to bleed more than 20 tanks containing more than 300,000 gallons of fuel, as well as lubricants, gases and potential contaminants such as oily water and sludge.

They drill through the ship's exposed double-walled steel exterior into the fuel bunkers below, placing pipes to pump the waste into a waiting ship. Divers are sent to enter the ships to empty the submerged tanks. It's delicate work: removing fuel can destabilize an already dangerous ship, so the process can take days, perhaps weeks.

Suddenly, a crisis occurred: after days of stress against the reef by the current, stress fractures appear along the hull. They could tear the ship apart. This dashes any hopes of returning the MS Seascape to service – the cost of repatriation will now exceed the value of the vessel.

After 10 days, shipwrecks threaten to tear apart the wreckage. A team of hundreds of engineers, crane operators, firefighters, laborers, divers and architects must move quickly.

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They cut the living block to clear the deck and make the process easier. One option to break the ship is to use explosives, which were applied to the huge container ship MSC Napoli, which broke into two parts in 2007 off the southern coast of England. But that would be disastrous for the fragile coral ecosystem beneath the wreckage.

Explosives are detonated to break up the cargo ship MSC Napoli near Branscombe, England, July 2007. Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Instead, the extraction team chooses a thick diamond-coated wire that can be cut from inch-thick steel. The saw is mounted on a specially designed frame that is lifted by cranes and sent to the accident site. For two days, his two legs are anchored to the seabed on either side of the wreckage. Inside the frame, the wire is cycled at high speed through a system of pulleys and lowered into a guillotine-like metal sheath, where it is cut through with an ear-splitting roar.

It can take up to 12 hours to cut a single cross-section, but the saw's surgical precision means it only grazes the reef below. It can also slice through cars parked on lower decks so fewer people can fall overboard and around the fuel tank.

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Fuel isn't the only environmental hazard: ships contain an unusual load of hazardous materials, such as polluting chemicals and lead embedded in paint, asbestos in walls, mercury wrapped around old ships' electrical wiring, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). These pollutants will gradually leach from the shells left to rot in the ocean. A sunken German warship is still leaking chemicals into the North Sea more than 80 years later.

MS Seascape is now surrounded by ships and equipment as pieces of the wreckage are cut away. Although the bow of the ship rests on a rock, the stern threatens to sink to the bottom of the ocean if it comes loose, so the team has a two-pronged plan.

First, the floating shovel: a giant crane on a floating platform capable of lifting 7,000 tons. It is a mechanical island with living quarters for dozens of workers who will be at sea for weeks to dismantle the wreckage.

The crew will divide the ship into eight sections. Starting from the spring, each slice is drilled with holes through which the cables are threaded, then lifted by a crane. Piece by piece, the ship is carefully loaded onto waiting barges and set sail.

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The Costa Concordia cruise ship, which ran aground on the island of Giglio, is towed after being refloated using air tanks attached to its sides, July 2014. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

The back requires a different approach. Before the aft segment is cut free, prop ships weld huge air-filled metal boxes called caissons to the starboard side. These are partially filled with water and when cut free add weight which turns the stern upright. As the stern is straightened, caissons are attached to its port side as well. On both sides these are filled and emptied with water so as to achieve perfect buoyancy to keep the rear afloat. Once released and launched, the stern is towed to port.

Not all debris requires the same approach. Some relatively less damaged ones, such as the Costa Concordia, can be repaired, completely re-raised with caissons, and then towed away. Others, such as the X-Press Pearl, whose cargo of nitric acid caught fire in Sri Lanka in 2019, causing the vessel to sink 68 feet, must be recovered from the seabed. swampy Sri Lankan beaches.

The X-Press Pearl needed dozens of cables to pick it up

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