Photo credit, Ken Ohrn on Twitter (X)
November 20, 2023
As reported in Daily Hive Vancouver on November 19, 2023.
Another sea container has attempted to crash into Vancouver nearly two years after a barge collided with the Sunset Beach seawall. According to the Canadian Coast Guard, it received reports of a blue barge that had broke loose from its mooring buoy in English Bay and was drifting towards the beach. Locals on social media shared video and photos of a barge blowing towards the seawall near English Bay’s Inukshuk statue. In a video posted to YouTube, a blue barge with the name of the marine industrial company Ralmax painted on its side can be seen nearly colliding with the wall before a tugboat successfully pulled the vessel into the open water.
“A crew from the Canadian Coast Guard Kitsilano base onboard the CCGS Laredo Sound tied onto the barge to try to hold it off of grounding onto Sunset Beach,” an email statement from the Coast Guard reads. “The Kitsilano 1 vessel, a second Coast Guard vessel from Kitsilano base, pushed from the stern of the barge as well. The two Coast Guard vessels successfully kept the barge off of the beach for about 30 minutes until a commercial tug could arrive and hook onto the barge.”
“The Seaspan tug Cates VIII arrived on scene, took the barge under tow, and resecured it to another mooring buoy in Vancouver Harbour.”
The Coast Guard confirmed that the sea container was an empty gravel barge.