The investigation has begun to determine the causes of the crash of the bulk carrier "Tanya Karpinskaya"

The Far Eastern Transport Investigation Department has begun an investigation into the crash of the bulk carrier Tanya Karpinskaya. The ship sank on February 7 in the waters of the port of the Japanese prefecture of Niigata within 30 minutes after a collision with a container ship. The reason for the rapid sinking of the vessel was its advanced age, according to the Far Eastern Association of Sea Captains. However, representatives of the shipowner company do not agree with this opinion, stating that the bulk carrier was fully operational and reliable. Experts confirm the position of the shipowner, explaining that a technically unreliable ship could not be allowed to go to sea.

Employees of the Primorsky Transport Prosecutor's Office and the Far Eastern Transport Investigation Department of the Russian Investigative Committee joined their Japanese colleagues in investigating the circumstances of the collision between the bulk carrier Tanya Karpinskaya (home port of Vladivostok) and the container ship Kota Duta. According to a representative of the prosecutor's office, department specialists are currently collecting all the information about the Tanya Karpinskaya vessel. “In particular, it is being established how competent the captain of the dry cargo ship was and whether he could have avoided a collision with the container ship,” noted a representative of the prosecutor’s office. He added that the amount of loss suffered by the shipowner company is also being clarified. The verification will last 10 days.

Let us remind you that the bulk carrier Tanya Karpinskaya sank in the waters of the port of Niigata in Japan on February 7. According to a representative of the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the bulk carrier Tanya Karpinskaya with a deadweight of 2621 tons arrived at the Japanese port from South Korea, where it was transporting Russian scrap metal. On board the ship there were two used foreign cars that did not pass radiation control in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. While moving to unload from one port berth to another, the ship collided with the Singapore container ship Kota Duta and received a serious hole in the midship area. The cargo ship began to rapidly sink. The 17 crew members on board managed to leave in time and were not injured. Another sailor from the Tanya Karpinskaya was later found alive on the shore. Currently, the crew is accommodated in a hotel; it is planned that in the coming days the sailors will fly to Primorye.

Meanwhile, experts are making their first assumptions about the causes of the incident. The President of the Far Eastern Association of Sea Captains, Pyotr Osichansky, in an interview with the Interfax-Far East agency, expressed the opinion that the reason for the rapid sinking of the vessel could be its age. “The cargo ship is 37 years old. The partition could not have withstood the impact, the ship was old, so it crumbled,” said Mr. Osichansky. However, later Mr. Osichansky clarified to Kommersant that, according to his new data, the rapid sinking of the vessel was due to the fact that the two adjacent partitions on the body. “Destruction occurred in the area of the ship’s superstructure, water went straight into the hold and engine room,” said Pyotr Osichansky. Thus, two compartments of the dry cargo ship were flooded at once, while ships of this class can float if water gets into only one compartment, he added.

Representatives of the ship-owner company deny any suggestions that the ship sank quickly due to its age. Shortly before the incident, the bulk carrier "Tanya Karpinskaya" underwent several inspections, including in Japan, which confirmed that the ship was in good technical condition, Gennady Shidlovsky, general director of CJSC "Universal Transshipment and Forwarding Company - 7", told Kommersant. “The motor ship complied with all the rules of the State Maritime Register of the Russian Federation. His age has nothing to do with it,” he added. Mr. Shidlovsky confirmed that the ship was insured, but found it difficult to say the amount of insurance.

Experts are inclined to believe that the age of the bulk carrier Tanya Karpinskaya could not have caused its rapid sinking. As Nadezhda Malysheva, development director of the information and analytical agency Portnews, told Kommersant, in all cases, before a vessel is allowed to operate between the seas of different countries, it undergoes strict technical condition control. “During inspections, experts prescribe what needs to be replaced in the vessel, even parts of the hull are changed. This is not the same as when repairing a car,” noted Ms. Malysheva. According to her, if in some place the metal on the hull of the dry cargo ship was thinner than normal, according to the instructions of the technical commission, it had to be replaced before being sent on the next voyage. “A dilapidated ship cannot enter international waters. Therefore, I believe that claims about the age of the dry cargo ship are inappropriate,” Ms. Malysheva emphasized. She added that the new ship could probably have sunk in half an hour, since everything in such cases depends on the nature of the hole.

Maria Gimaeva

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