Accidents
The helmswoman is said to have destroyed the Rhine lock while drunk
The motor freight ship La Primavera rammed and damaged a lock gate near Iffezheim. photo
© Henry Mungenast/EinsatzReport24/dpa
A cargo ship rams and destroys a lock gate on the Upper Rhine near Karlsruhe. Millions of dollars in damage is caused. Now it turns out: the tax woman had apparently been drinking alcohol.
She’s supposed to be behind the wheel of a freighter The helmsman of the ship that rammed and destroyed the gate of a lock on the Upper Rhine near Iffezheim (Rastatt district) last Saturday was said to have been drunk. The water police said they were being investigated for endangering shipping traffic. The woman is not the captain of the motor freight ship. At the time of the accident, she was co-pilot at the wheel, a spokesman said.
The cargo ship drove head-on into the closed lock gate on the Rhine on its way from Basel towards Karlsruhe last Saturday afternoon. The route is dead straight, said the spokesman. “A lock employee could see the ship coming for minutes.”
Repairs could take up to a year
Due to the force of the impact, its bow broke through the lock gate and got stuck. At that moment there was another ship in the lock. Nobody got hurt. The ship was also virtually undamaged, the spokesman said. As a result of the accident, the Rhine lock can only be accessed via one of the two lock chambers, which can lead to waiting times for shipping traffic.
The water police estimate the damage at around one and a half million euros. The repair work could take up to a year because the heavy lock gate would have to be custom-made. “Nobody has anything like that in the camp.”
A cargo ship ramming a lock without braking is also unusual for the water police, said the spokesman. “None of my colleagues knew of another case like this.”
The investigators did not want to say how drunk the tax woman was or how old she is. “It would probably have been different after a glass of beer. She was already pretty drunk.”