City firefighters spent nearly two hours rescuing a dock worker who fell 40 feet Monday afternoon inside the hull of a container ship moored at the Port of Albany.
By Steve Hughes Source Times Union, Albany, N.Y. (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Dec. 6—ALBANY — City firefighters spent nearly two hours rescuing a dock worker who fell 40 feet Monday afternoon inside the hull of a container ship moored at the Port of Albany.
Rich Hendricks, the port’s CEO, said the longshoremen working on the ship were returning from their lunch break when the accident happened shortly before 1:30 p.m. To access the ship’s holds, workers descend a series of ladders and at some point, the man lost his grip, Hendricks said. The worker landed on a grate above the hold.
Fire Chief Joseph Gregory said the 61-year-old man suffered pelvic and upper leg injuries.
The department called in a physician from Albany Medical Center Hospital to help the victim and provide pain medication while they worked to stabilize and prepare to remove him from the ship.
Firefighters were able to perform a high-angle rescue with the aid of a port crane, dubbed ” Big Yellow.”
Once the man was medically stable, rescue crews secured him to a litter, known as a Stokes basket, and put him inside another basket that attached to the crane. The highly technical rescue was complicated by wind at the port, which threatened to send the baskets, along with its occupants, spinning through the air as it was lifted out of the hull, Gregory said.
The fire chief praised the firefighters who responded to the situation, calling their work, “textbook.”
He said the victim’s injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
The ship, the Reggeborg, had arrived to the port on Sunday after a stop in Searsport, Maine. The ship is registered to a Dutch company, Royal Wagenborg.