03/29/2021 1:46 AM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 03/29/2021 1:46 AM
The maneuvers to try to refloat the ship 'Ever Given', which was stranded in the Suez Canal since last Tuesday, were successful during the early hours of this Monday.
This was confirmed by the maritime service provider Inchcape Shipping, which detailed that the 400-meter-long, 220,000-ton container ship
was refloated at 4.30 am
(local time) and that it "is already insured."
The head of the Suez Canal Authority, Admiral Osama Rabi, had announced a few hours before that the work to try to unload the ship was resumed with the help of
10 giant tugs
that operated from four different directions.
Despite having managed to unload the ship from this 300-meter-wide waterway, at the moment the date on which maritime traffic will be resumed has not been announced.
The ship was stranded on Tuesday and has since caused an unprecedented traffic jam on one of the world's busiest trade routes.
In this way, it caused the diversion of more than 200 ships and the paralysis of assets worth 9,500 million euros a day.
The ship 'Ever Given' was stranded from Tuesday, March 23, until the early hours of the following Monday.
AP Photo.
In the liberation process, the use of tugs and dredgers that sucked sand from under the ship, whose bow was embedded in the shore, was essential.
According to the spokesman for the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority (SCA), George Safwat, some 27,000 cubic meters of sand had been removed as of this past Sunday.
The incident had been caused by a sandstorm and strong gusts of wind, a common phenomenon in Egypt at this time of year, which deprived visibility and caused the vessel to veer off course.
"It ran aground mainly due to the lack of visibility due to meteorological conditions at a time when the winds reached 40 knots (about 75 km / h), which affected the control of the ship," they explained from the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority (SCA) in a statement.
With information from DPA.
DB
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