A man in Norway woke to find a 443-foot shipping vessel towering over his home after it ran aground into his yard.
Johan Helberg had slept through the initial impact of the NCL Salten as it sailed into his yard in Byneset, Norway, early Thursday morning, Helberg said in an interview with the Norwegian broadcaster NRK. But after waking to his neighbors ringing his doorbell, he looked out the window to find the ship’s bright orange-and-green bow — quite a different sight from his usual picturesque views of the Trondheim Fjord. “It was quite absurd,” Helberg said, noting that it had stopped just meters from his house.
“If it had hit five meters further to the right, it would have slid up the rocky cliff, and then my house would probably look quite different,” Helberg said. He told NRK that the ship cut a wire to his heating pump.
No one was injured when the 11,000-ton ship ran aground, Bente Hetland, chief executive of NCL, the company that chartered the ship, said in a statement Friday. There were 16 crew members on board at the time of the crash — a mix of Norwegians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians and one Russian, she said.
Police are still investigating why the ship ran aground, Hetland said, and have identified one person as a suspect. Police have charged the ship’s second mate — a Ukrainian man in his 30s — with negligent navigation after he told investigators during an interrogation that he had fallen asleep while on duty at the time of the impact at 5:32 a.m. local time, according to the police.
“The individual charged was the officer on watch at the time of the incident,” Kjetil Bruland Sorensen, the prosecutor in charge of the case in Trondelag police district, said in a statement.
The impact triggered a landslide Thursday, and the Norwegian Coastal Administration, which is overseeing the salvage operation, spent Friday conducting geotechnical surveys to ensure the area is safe, Kristin Marthinsen Ballantine, an administration spokesperson, said in an email.
The ship is owned by Baltnautic and flies a flag from Cyprus, according to NCL, which is in charge of the salvage costs and is working to refloat the ship. “We are currently assessing the damage to the ship and have initiated an internal investigation into the root causes of the incident,” Hetland said. “The findings of this investigation will be followed up with measures designed to reinforce and further enhance safety on ships chartered by NCL.”
The ship remained embedded outside Helberg’s home Friday as coastal authorities and the company that chartered the ship assessed how best to safely remove it. “This remains an ongoing rescue operation, and our highest priority is to ensure a safe and secure salvage operation,” Hetland said.