The Toronto Star
ONTARIO, Canada — Violently ill crew members of a foreign grain freighter were lowered by rope ladder and ferried by tugboat across Lake Erie in the dead of night following a potentially deadly gas leak, officials said Wednesday.
The Hermann Schoening, a German ship registered in Liberia, was on its way to Montreal and near Port Colborne when 16 of the ship’s 21 Chinese crew members became sick.
A chemist flown in from Montreal quickly identified the culprit: phosphine gas, a chemical used to fumigate or control pests in processed foods, stored tobacco, animal feeds and non-food products.
The ship’s cargo was fumigated in Milwaukee — the fumigant contained phosphine gas that leaked into the crew’s quarters, said Port Colborne Fire Chief Tom Cartwright.
The crew members were vomiting violently, had extreme diarrhea, severe headaches and dizziness and were unable to stand on their own.
“Quite frankly, if we hadn’t acted on it, because of the type of leak it was, we probably would have had fatalities on-board the ship,” he said.
The sickened crew were taken to various hospitals in the Niagara and Hamilton regions. Most had been released by late Wednesday.
The five other crew who did not fall ill, including the captain, remained on-board.
The process of getting the sick sailors to hospital began Tuesday afternoon and stretched into the early hours of Wednesday.
Tugboats made their way to the ship, anchored 3.7 nautical miles from Port Colborne, to bring the crew to hospital. The process of lowering the ill sailors over the side, helping them down a rope ladder onto the tugboats and then making their way back to shore didn’t end until 3:30 a.m., Cartwright said.
Copyright 2010 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited