Haven (ship)
 The wreck of the Haven
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
The Haven (formerly: Amoco Milford Haven ) was a VLCC oil tanker sailing under the Cypriot flag . It belonged to the Troodos Shipping company owned by the Greek entrepreneur Lucas Haji-Ioannou and his son Stelios Haji-Ioannou .
On April 11, 1991 , the ship, loaded with 144,000 tons of crude oil , exploded and sank in front of the port of the northern Italian city of Genoa on April 13 , killing six people and up to 50,000 tons of oil in the Mediterranean Sea . Today the ship is lying on the ground at a depth of 82 meters and is used by tech divers for wreck diving . Since the taller structures towered up to a depth of 24 meters, they were cut off so that the highest structures are now 34 meters deep.
history
The Amoco Milford Haven was built by Astilleros Españoles in Cádiz, Spain, as a sister ship to the Amoco Cadiz , which in turn sank in 1978. The Haven entered service in 1973 and served various crude oil transport routes in the Middle East . In 1987 the ship was hit by an Exocet missile in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war and was badly damaged. After extensive repair work in Singapore , it was sold to a brokerage company, which in turn leased it to Troodos Shipping . This company used the Haven on the transport route between the Iranian island of Charg and the Mediterranean.
Accident off Genoa
Coordinates: 44 ° 22 ′ 0.3 ″ N , 8 ° 42 ′ 0.1 ″ E
On April 11, 1991, the Haven was in the process of unloading a cargo of 230,000 tons of crude oil at the Multedo floating platform in front of the port of Genoa . But it was about seven miles off the Ligurian coast. After 80,000 tonnes had been unloaded, that was Haven decoupled from the platform to enable the transfer of additional oil from the external tank into the central main tank.
“I heard a very loud noise, as if iron bars were hitting each other. Maybe a pump cover was broken. Then there was a terrible explosion. "
Five members of the crew died in the first few minutes when a fire broke out and oil began to leak from the heat-leaking hull. When the fire had hit the entire ship, a flame up to 100 meters high could be observed. After a series of other explosions, between 30,000 and 40,000 tons of oil ended up in the sea.
With enormous difficulty, several hundred rescue workers succeeded in installing a six-mile (almost 10 km) long oil barrier with a depth of one meter to prevent the oil slick from spreading further. On the second day, the Haven should be towed closer to the coast in order to reduce the length of the stretch of coast affected by oil pollution and to get easier access to the still burning ship. When the bow began to sink below the surface of the water, a steel cable was tied to the rudder and tied up with tugs . However, it became clear quickly that the keel of Haven was broken. The bow section sank and hit the bottom at a depth of around 450 meters. On April 14, the tanker's remaining 250-meter main body sank a mile and a half offshore between the towns of Arenzano and Varazze .
After the wreck was declared safe, a mini submarine found that the stern section had scratched a rock spur. Fortunately, however, no oil leaked from the spot. It was also found that a large part of the remaining 80,000 tons of oil had burned or came to the surface of the water. The oil on the surface could be sucked off except for small residues bound in the solid phase. Over the next twelve years, the coast around Genoa and in southern France was polluted.
Consequences and court rulings
The prosecution targeted Stelios Haji-Ioannou and his father Lucas Haji-Ioannou, who were accused as owners of having operated the Haven in such a dilapidated state that it finally exploded in 1991. According to press reports, the tanker was due to be scrapped after being hit by a missile, but it did not. The prosecution demanded a seven-year prison sentence for manslaughter for both father and son . For the former director of the shipping company Christos Dovles, the indictment requested two years and four months imprisonment.
In the course of the trial, Lucas Haji-Ioannou and his son Stelios Haji-Ioannou were accused of killing six people and of extorting , intimidating and bribing witnesses . Both denied any guilt.
Despite the serious allegations, both were acquitted after three appeals (the last of which was in 2002). Further appeal proceedings and claims for damages were excluded. The course of the proceedings and the judgments were discussed controversially around the world. Regarding the trial, Stelios Haji-Ioannou said, "My real comment is why it took so long to wash innocent people off these horrific charges."
Reactions
A State Secretary for the Italian Ministry of the Environment expressed his bitterness over the verdict, saying: "The victims, their families and the marine environment, all of whom have suffered severe damage, have no convincing answers."
The Italian president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Grazia Francescato, told the press that they find repugnant Haji-Ioannous behavior, and drew parallels to the ferry disaster of the Moby Prince against Livorno . This happened on the same day as the Haven disaster . 140 people were killed; all four defendants were acquitted.
The NUMAST , a union of Merchant Marine, described the acquittal as "depressing". The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) also found the same words . Only if shipowners were made responsible for the condition of their ships, ailing ships could be withdrawn, said the spokesman for NUMAST, Andrew Linington. And further: "Even if ship owners are properly associated with ships that do not have an acceptable standard, no action appears to be taken."
See also
Web links
- Italian website on the accident ( Italian / English / French )
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Making it look easy by Joanna Walters in The Observer
- ↑ a b c d Unions and environmental groups furious at Haji-Ioannou acquittal by Jean Christou in Cyprus Mail