COVID-19 Fuels Abandonment of Ships – and Their Cargoes and Crews
By K. Oanh Ha and Bruce Stanley | December 18, 2020
From the deck of their tanker, Captain Samig Nabiyev and his crew could see the smoke and fire rising over the Port of Beirut, 900 meters away. When the flaming warehouse exploded, the force of the blast knocked Nabiyev flat on his back.
“I thought I was finished,” said the 43-year-old Nabiyev, who’s worked on ships for almost 20 years. “We were all afraid for our lives.”
Nabiyev and the 11 other crew members weren’t supposed to be in Beirut on Aug. 4, the day of the disaster that killed around 200 people and wounded more than 6,000. Like the tons of ammonium nitrate that had eventually exploded in the port, they too had been abandoned by the owner of their ship, left to the discretion of local officials and insurers. No one on Nabiyev’s crew was hurt, but as they learned more about the explosion in the weeks to come, they recognized the same industry practices that had left them stranded for months.