A Celebrity Cruises ship has crashed into a dock causing millions of dollars in damage at a port in the Alaska Panhandle.
The Celebrity Infinity struck one of three berths at the port in Ketchikan, Alaska as it approached on Friday afternoon during bad weather.
Dramatic footage, caught on camera phones by people on shore, shows the luxury ship crashing into the berth and a large metal beam falling into the water.
Personnel on the dock noticed the ship’s approach was wrong and moved out of the way.
“The angle of his bow was wrong,” Jamison Mork, who was on a nearby boat at the time, told the Ketchikan News-Miner. “He was coming in, pointing at the pier too strongly. … You could hear his bow thruster going to try and push his bow away, but the wind was pushing him into the pier.”
The Alaska Dispatch News quotes port officials saying the ship’s collision caused damage of up to US$3 million.
Ketchikan Assistant City Manager Dave Martin said it is unclear how long the berth will be closed because it is too early to say how badly the dock is damaged.
“When (things) first happened, they really looked bad, and I’m not saying it looks good,” Dave Martin told the Ketchikan newspaper. “But I think that it’s too early on to make that call. We simply don’t know.”
