1 April 2024 11:26 am
The Singapore cargo ship Dali chartered by Maersk, which crashed into the Baltimore, US bridge on Tuesday 26 March, was carrying 764 tons of hazardous materials to Sri Lanka, US media reported. The waste included mostly corrosives, flammables, miscellaneous hazardous materials, and Class-9 hazardous materials, including explosives & lithium-ion batteries – in 56 containers. So says the US National Transportation Safety Board, still ‘analyzing the ship’s manifest to determine what was onboard’ in its other 4,644 containers. Prior to Baltimore, the Dali called at New York and Norfolk, Virginia, which has the world’s largest naval base. Colombo was to be its next scheduled call, going around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, taking 27 days, scheduled to land just after our New Year.
Denmark’s Maersk, transporter for the US Department of War, is integral to US military logistics, carrying up to 20% of the world’s merchandise trade annually on a fleet of about 600 vessels, including some of the world’s largest ships.
The US Department of Homeland Security has also now deemed the waters near the crash site as ‘unsafe for divers’. An ‘unclassified memo’ from the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) says a US Coast Guard team is examining 13 damaged containers, ‘some with Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [CDC] &/or hazardous materials [HAZMAT] contents.
The team is also analyzing the ship’s manifest to determine if any materials could pose a health risk’. CISA says, officials are also monitoring about 1.8 million gallons of fuel inside Dali for its ‘spill potential’.
The ship had a total of 4,700 containers onboard. Who exactly the toxic materials & fuel were destined for in Sri Lanka is not being reported, US media reported.