A special traffic control will be imposed in a busy and narrow
waterway of the Huangpu River, which runs through China's largest
economic hub Shanghai, for salvage operation on a 15,000-tonnage
sunken dredger, sources with the local maritime authorities said on
Wednesday.
Measures will be also taken to prevent any pollution from the
operation.
Shanghai Salvage Bureau under the Ministry of Communications is
taking on the salvage work, which began Monday afternoon and will
be completed on Feb. 16, 2007.
The vessel capsized on the afternoon of Dec. 2, when it was
conducting dredging near the Napu Bridge over the river.
More than half of the 200-meter-wide waterway at the accident
site will be demarcated for salvage vessels and the sunken dredger
named Yin Chu till the operation is finished.
Cost of the salvage operation, for dragging equipment, labor and
silt clearing purposes, is estimated at 16.5 million yuan (2.1
million U.S. dollars), which will be covered by the refit company
and five ship owners equally.
Sources with the salvage bureau said Yin Chu has more than 60
cubic meters of fuel oil and lubricant. Measures will be taken to
prevent oil leaking during the operation.
The dredger, transformed from a roll-on-roll-off vessel, was
146.5 meters long and 22.6 meters wide. The whole body of the ship
were submerged, with only part of its control cabin sticking out of
the water.
Divers from the salvage bureau said there were a large amount of
scrapped steel bricks and wires around the sunken vessel, and that
the ship has sunken two meters into the silt. All this made salvage
work more difficult, they added.
According to the bureau, frogmen will attach steel cables to the
sunken vessel. The cables will be connected to six pairs of
floating canisters and two floating cranes. Two salvage boats will
also assist in the procedure.
The salvage work requires 13 sockets to which the steel cables
should be attached. Divers continued to fix part of the sockets on
Wednesday.
Preliminary investigation found the vessel sank after one of its
doors was inadvertently opened, letting water flow in. Crew and
workers on the ship escaped before the sinking. No casualties were
reported.?
(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2006)