Rains hit three ship-to-shore cranes at JNPT, no major damage likely

As heavy rains continue to lash Mumbai, the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) at Navi Mumbai today saw three out of its nine ship-to-shore cranes collapse due to strong winds.

“Thankfully, the cranes have not collapsed on the front side so we are expecting the damage to be minimal. However, we will be able to access the damage only tomorrow once we go to the site for survey. Currently, the winds are so strong and visibility being low, we cannot go to the site immediately,” a senior traffic division officer at JNPT told Business Standard.

Meanwhile, the official clarified that since there was no vessel at the berth, the cranes were not in operation and hence no operational hindrance has occurred at the port.

“Our other six cranes are functioning and operations at the port are not affected due to these three. However, at this juncture we cannot give a timeline as to when all three collapsed cranes will get back to work,” informed the official.

A ship-to-shore crane, also known as container crane is found at container terminals for loading and unloading intermodal containers from container ships.

“There are no casualties or injuries due to crane collapse as today port operations were shut due to bad weather,” JNPT spokesperson said.

All the three cranes that collapsed were of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Container Terminal (JNPCT), which is the port’s own terminal.

Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (NSICT-DP World), Gateway Terminals India (GTI-APM Terminals) and Bharat Mumbai Container Terminal (BMCT)-Fourth Container Terminal are the other three terminals at the container port.

Amid the pandemic, JNPT is seeing its cargo volumes picking up steadily. Between April-July, the port handled a container traffic of 11,92,165 TEUs, about 80 percent of the total traffic it had handled in the same period last year.

In July, JNPT handled 3,44,316 TEUs container traffic, about 19 percent up from previous month.

Meanwhile, airlines also faced an issue and had to divert flights due to heavy rains today.

Atleast three IndiGo flights were diverted from Mumbai due to gusting winds on Wednesday evening.

Several aircraft arriving in Mumbai executed go arounds or were forced to discontinue approach resulting in delays.

Sources said wind shear was reported from Mumbai referring  to sudden change in speed and direction of wind. The phenomenon is considered dangerous and pilots are advised against landing in such conditions.