A rather strange incident:
During the final placement of two self-propelled harbor cranes on deck of the vessel ‘Jumbo Vision’, one of the cranes had a steering problem and fell overboard into the harbor basin; then, the second one followed into the water.
The ‘Liebherr LHM 550’ is a mobile harbor crane on a wheeled chassis. Its outreach is 52 meters and its lifting capacity is up to 152 tons. It has a height of 40 meters and a weight of up to 400 tons.
Thank you for that. I’m familiar with the cranes involved so the comprehensive report made possible by data collection is interesting. I suppose like everything else commercial imperatives have pushed operations like this to take place as quickly as possible. I hope that this incident pushes back against this to ensure future operations proceed in their own time safely.
I wonder what, if anything they did differently, or precautions taken, loading the second go around (in Brazil) as well as the discharge port
From the report: a slight synchronous roll was created from small movements while positioning the crane on deck. Then the crane started rolling towards the seaward side. The operator countered the movement of the crane to the seaward side but all the hydraulic flow went only to the wheels that were spinning.
In the report it says that they are not allowed to move the mobile cranes when they are actually on the deck of the ship anymore, as that was what triggered this accident.
They must have to be lifted into the exact position.
Yes.
If the two ship cranes work independently, they can cover every corner of the deck.
However, here the two 400-ton cranes worked in tandem and could not reach out to the (mis-) planned position.
Maybe they changed the stowing plan for the later voyage from Brazil…
When you read the analysis part you find that simply the vessel did not possess enough righting arm while alongside to prevent a heel past the critical point if moving these cranes even the fractions of a meter they did and the steel plates set on the hatch covers were not welded down and easily slipped.
Lots of failures to go around. Not a load out plan where all possible scenarios were looked at by those responsible with the resultant consequences seen.
