A towering cruise ship collided with a dock and a tourist boat in Venice on Sunday, injuring four people and reigniting calls for large vessels to be banned from the lagoon city.
Manuel Silvestri and Riccardo Bastianello
June 2 2019 9:36 PM
A towering cruise ship collided with a dock and a tourist boat in Venice on Sunday, injuring four people and reigniting calls for large vessels to be banned from the lagoon city.
MSC Cruises said the 2,679-passenger Opera, a 54-metre high and 275-metre long liner which dwarfed the Venice skyline, was approaching a passenger terminal on the Giudecca canal when it hit the dock and a nearby ferry after a technical problem.
Footage of the incident showed passengers who had been waiting at a wharf in San Basilio-Zattere fleeing for safety as the huge ship, its horns blaring, crashed into the much smaller, moored « River Countess » boat, which had 110 people onboard.
« I thought the ship was going to crash into my house, » a resident living nearby told Italy’s state television.
Pino Musolino, chairman of the northern Adriatic Sea port authority, said four people had suffered minor injuries in the crash. Emergency workers said the cruise ship appeared to have lost control after a steel cable that tied it to a tugboat snapped.
Local media said the four injured were female tourists from the United States, Australia and New Zealand aged between 67 and 72.
The accident rekindled a heated row in Italy over the risks to the fragile ecosystem and monuments of Venice posed by cruise ships that routinely sail very close to the shore.
