Brand-new Chinese cargo ship bound for Indonesia runs aground

A team of Coast Guard Administration (CGA) officials and local firemen rescued the 15 crewmen of the Kijang and quartered them at a temporary shelter managed by the Fangliao Township Administration.

Two of the 15 rescued men are Chinese citizens and the other 13 are Indonesians. They told CGA officials that the 2,989-ton ship was sailing from Taizhou Port in China’s Zhejiang Province to the Indonesian port of Tarakan when it lost power in stormy seas in the Taiwan Strait and started to drift.

According to Chang Chih-peng, a CGA team leader, his duty officers spotted the ship drifting about 180 meters from shore shortly before 2 a.m., and a rescue operation was launched immediately, with CGA officials and local firemen throwing ropes to the ship to bring the crew to safety. The mission was completed in less than two hours.

Chang said that shortly after the crewmen were rescued, the strong winds and waves pushed the ship aground on the shoreline.

“The ship had set anchor near the shore, but the currents were so strong that the anchor chain snapped,” he said.

“The ship suffered no damage, and so far there is no oil leakage problem, but we can’t let the ship remain where it is,” he went on, adding that if the ship is not pulled back to sea, the 60,000 liters of diesel aboard the ship might leak and cause a pollution problem.

What has made the situation worse from a salvage point of view is that the vessel is not insured, Chang noted.

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