EVER GIVENS REFLOATS

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority (SCA), has on Monday announced that the Panamanian container ship ‘EVER GIVEN’ stuck in the Suez Canal has been successfully refloated.

Admiral Osama Rabie, Chairman and Managing Director of the Suez Canal Authority has confirmed the development saying this was the result of successful push and tow maneuvers which led to the restoration of 80% of the vessel’s direction.

The EVER GIVEN ship which is 400 meters long and 59 meters wide, with 18,300 containers onboard with a capacity of 224,000 tons was on March 25, stuck in the canal due to bad weather and a sandstorm.

The ship however wedged diagonally across the canal at 151km of the canal where vessels pass through from both directions resulted in the suspension of the international maritime trade through the canal.

The number of ships waiting in the Suez Canal blocked by the vessel reached 321 vessels over the weekend.

The SCA was quick to disclose that the incident did not result in any injuries, deaths, or pollution accidents.

However, SCA added that the sand storm and the bad weather could not be the main cause of the incident but also human or technical error could be the reason hence a need for investigations to know the exact reasons after refloating the ship.