Tremors, tidal waves stall cargo handling at Vizag port

The tremors and tidal waves that lashed the coastal belt of Andhra Pradesh on Sunday affected the cargo handling operations at the Visakhapatnam Port.

Several mechanised boats and trawlers were severely damaged due to the high tidal waves, causing an estimated loss of around Rs 3 lakh.

Tidal waves, some as high as three to four metres, shook the entire Visakhapatnam coastline, especially the Visakhapatnam Port and the fishing harbour between 8 am and 9 am.

"Five vessels at the inner harbour and two vessels at the outer harbour were engaged in cargo handling and unloading operations on Sunday. After the tremors hit the region, we have ceased the loading and unloading operations for some time at both the inner and outer harbours. We resumed work from afternoon but have terminated the vessels' movements temporarily," Dattu Raju, traffic manager of Visakhapatnam Port, told Business Standard.

Ship repair works in the yards of the Hindustan Shipyard Limited have also been stalled for some time due to the tidal waves.

"We did not have any physical damages due to the tremors. We have taken all precautionary measures and all our assets are intact.The ship repair work at our dry dock is going on normally," Rear Admiral Ajit Tewari, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Shipyard Limited, told Business Standard.

The seawater intake system of the NTPC Simhadri Power Plant was also slightly affected by high tidal waves. NTPC has been using seawater for cooling purposes.

A majority of the deaths that occurred in Andhra Pradesh have been reported from Krishna and Prakasam districts, though a few cases of deaths were also reported from the coastal areas of East Godavari, Nellore and Guntur districts.

While most of the casualties from Prakasam district were fishermen, the tragedy in Krishna district was some what different. Scores of people who came to take a dip in the Bay of Bengal on the eve of the auspicious 'Pournami' day were reportedly swept away by the killer tidal waves.

According to an eye witness, the fate of over fifty mechanised fishing boats carrying at least 200 fishermen, which went into sea for fishing in the early hours of Sunday from the Nizampatnam harbour in the Krishna district is still not known.

Over 20,000 people in the low-lying areas of Prakasam district have been evacuated to safer places. Chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy visited Nizampatnam and other places besides conducting an areal survey. He instructed the revenue officials to take up relief measures on a war footing besides evacuating people from the low-lying places.

At the fishing harbour, several mechanised boats and trawlers were badly damaged. Around 45 trawlers and 300 mechanised boats were berthed at the fishing harbour on Sunday. Due to the high tidal waves, the entire fishing harbour was flooded with seawater.

Two mechanised boats submerged at the jetty itself in the afternoon and close to Rs 3 lakh worth of fishing material was washed away.

With many mechanised boats and trawlers colliding with each other due to the high tidal waves, some operators took away their fishing vessels into the mid-sea to protect their vessels from crashing into each other at the harbour.

"The tremors and the high tidal waves have come as a shock to us, and this is the first time that such a thing happened in the history of the Visakhapatnam fishing harbour. A few fishing vessels ar emissing from the harbour and we are on the lookout for them in the mid-sea," SK Aggarwal, president of Association of Indian Fishery Industries and managing director of Sagarika Sea Crafts Limited, told Business Standard.