Johan Helberg was sound asleep in his waterfront home in Byneset west of Trondheim early Thursday morning when a 135-meter-long cargo ship grounded right outside his bedroom. He considers himself lucky that the vessel didn’t crash into his house.
The surprisingly calm Helberg escorted Jøte Toftaker of Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) across his lawn to where the bow of the ship from North Sea Container Line, the NCL Salten, was towering next to his home. He’d been watching the emergency response since the grounding occurred at around 5am, when it’s not even dark at this time of the year. The weather was also good.
Asked what he knew about the unusual grounding, Helberg said the ship has been sailing “on autopilot from the other side of the fjord and not to the right (west) towards Orkanger (the vessel’s destination), but straight ahead to Byneslandet, so someone has not been paying attention on board.”
Helberg was nonetheless relieved that the ship, which newspaper VG reported has also grounded earlier, didn’t ground five meters (15 feet) farther to the right, “because then it would have come right into the bedroom, and that wouldn’t have been very nice.” He said he didn’t hear anything even when the ship grounded because it didn’t hit anything apart from tearing apart Helberg’s source of sea water to his heating pump. An initial attempt to tow the vessel out to sea failed, so emergency crews had to wait to try again at the next high tide Thursday evening.
There were 16 people on board the vessel and neither police nor coastal authorities had any reports of injury or oil slicks. Emergency vessels and a fire boat were standing by. Helberg was following the maritime operation with great interest and told NRK that he chose to see “the absurd” in the situation: “It’s not often you see a ship standing on the shore of where you’ve been swimming all your life.”
A spokesperson for North Sea Container Line said the vessel has sailed along the Norwegian coast for 15 years, “and there have been incidents,” but she stressed how no one was injured there was no environmental damage. Both internal and external investigations of the grounding loom.
For photos and video from the accident, click here (external link to NRK’s coverage, in Norwegian).
NewsinEnglish.no staff