Encore gangway collapse in Panama

[Captain-John]

  

I have relatives on this sailing, who used the gangway prior to the collapse. They know very little however, most of it rumour and hearsay.  User58953268 has the most detailed account.

 

2 minutes ago, DCGuy64 said:

The cynic in me says the same people who might have said "this isn't fair, it's taking too long!" are now blaming NCL for the results of their own impatience.

 

I'm sorry to disagree with you but unless the passengers overruled crew instruction and descended onto the gangway having ignored advice, I can't see how any blame can be apportioned to passengers here, and it lies squarely with NCL and/or the port.

 

NCL/the port authority should never have allowed a situation whereby only 2 pax at a time could disembark a 4,000 passenger ship. Not to mention the fact they knew there was a potential issue by restricting the numbers in the first place.

 

I think passengers would be correct to complain about things taking too long, but the solution is to disembark from a lower deck or use equipment that is set up safely and can handle the job, not to just 'allow' passengers onto something they had a good idea was unsuitable.

 

I don't think injury is a fair outcome for passengers who may have complained about the waiting time.

[luv2kroooz]

31 minutes ago, DCGuy64 said:

 The cynic in me says the same people who might have said "this isn't fair, it's taking too long!" are now blaming NCL for the results of their own impatience.

 

 

No way! I don't know where blame resides because I wasn't there, but it would seem to me the passengers are pretty far down on that list. The gangway owner/operator and NCL have a basic responsibility to ensure operations are conducted in a safe manner. Safety is paramount. What a passenger may or may not want can never override safety.

 

This is the reason why Captains make the decision to divert away from tropical storms and hurricanes even though passengers may be upset by it. I can't imagine a situation where a captain would knowingly sacrifice safety of passengers and crew to meet passenger demands.

 

From the above post, it sounds like the port authority and NCL may have enforced the weight limit in the morning of the first day which resulted in safe operations, yet abandoned this measure in the afternoon of Day 2, when the incident occurred. I wonder if distance to the next port played into the need to accelerate embarkation on the afternoon of Day 2??

 

[www3traveler]

1 hour ago, luv2kroooz said:

No way! I don't know where blame resides because I wasn't there, but it would seem to me the passengers are pretty far down on that list. The gangway owner/operator and NCL have a basic responsibility to ensure operations are conducted in a safe manner. Safety is paramount. What a passenger may or may not want can never override safety.

 

This is the reason why Captains make the decision to divert away from tropical storms and hurricanes even though passengers may be upset by it. I can't imagine a situation where a captain would knowingly sacrifice safety of passengers and crew to meet passenger demands.

 

From the above post, it sounds like the port authority and NCL may have enforced the weight limit in the morning of the first day which resulted in safe operations, yet abandoned this measure in the afternoon of Day 2, when the incident occurred. I wonder if distance to the next port played into the need to accelerate embarkation on the afternoon of Day 2??

 

They sailed from Panama City at 10:30 P.M. according to the date and time stamp on their Bow Web Cam.  They sailed a very short distance, got in line to enter The Panama Canal very early on the morning of the 8th of November (4:30 A.M.)

[BirdTravels]

4 hours ago, Captain-John said:

  

I have relatives on this sailing, who used the gangway prior to the collapse. They know very little however, most of it rumour and hearsay.  User58953268 has the most detailed account.

 

But the user5 did not see anything. Their story is all hearsay. And their is a ton of [inaccurate] assertions based on no fact.

 

For example, "the NCL staff was concerned enough about the gangway that they were only letting a small number of people go down the gangway at a time" asserts that NCL used a known dangerous gangway. A more plausible assertion could be "because the gangway was steep, they were only letting a small number of people go down the gangway at a time". This is what mainstream media does by taking bits of piece of information out of context and seam it together into an report to fit their purposes (a.k.a. fake news). 

[3kidsncats]

5 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

But the user5 did not see anything. Their story is all hearsay. And their is a ton of [inaccurate] assertions based on no fact.

 

For example, "the NCL staff was concerned enough about the gangway that they were only letting a small number of people go down the gangway at a time" asserts that NCL used a known dangerous gangway. A more plausible assertion could be "because the gangway was steep, they were only letting a small number of people go down the gangway at a time". This is what mainstream media does by taking bits of piece of information out of context and seam it together into an report to fit their purposes (a.k.a. fake news). 

Definitely second hand for me, since I wasn’t there, but our friends were, and they used the gangway twice. They felt some degree of concern both due to the morning restriction of how many were allowed on the gangway (as very frequent cruisers, they are well aware two at a time on a gangway is NOT the norm, so it’s reasonable to extrapolate that there was some kind of concern about the safety of the gangway).  They also described the experience of using it as being similar to a rope bridge— that it moved and they felt uncomfortable using it.  I think it is clear that the gangway was not safe enough for the way it was set up, and the passenger load it was used for — and the fact that  NCL crew severely limited the number of passengers early in the day is a very strong indicator that they suspected it was not safe.  

[User58953268]

7 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

But the user5 did not see anything. Their story is all hearsay. And their is a ton of [inaccurate] assertions based on no fact.

 

For example, "the NCL staff was concerned enough about the gangway that they were only letting a small number of people go down the gangway at a time" asserts that NCL used a known dangerous gangway. A more plausible assertion could be "because the gangway was steep, they were only letting a small number of people go down the gangway at a time". This is what mainstream media does by taking bits of piece of information out of context and seam it together into an report to fit their purposes (a.k.a. fake news). 

 

BirdTravels, I appreciate that you value factual reporting and I at least somewhat understand where you’re coming from because I value and strive for this also. I apologize if I have drawn conclusions. 

 

To say the gangway was too steep to allow multiple passengers would also be a hypothesis/theory, right?

 

The gangway was steep, but to my knowledge what seemed more dangerous was the fact that it was unstable. The two ramp pieces of the gangway (not sure the correct terminology) had an issue at the merging point which made the whole thing unstable. It bounced/shook/wobbled even when just one person stepped out. People were nervous about it. That much I know.  

 

IT IS MOST CERTAINLY UNKNOWN (at least to me) THE EXTENT TO WHICH NCL KNEW THE DANGERS INVOLVED. Whether NCL made the call to limit the number of people walking on it because they knew it to be dangerous, or because it seemed like it could be dangerous is unknown. The only fact I know to be true is that they were only allowing 1-2 people on it at a time- When the first person neared the end, the second was allowed to step on. 

 

As I said previously, everyone I have spoken to who walked on it has the same story about it being rickety. 

 

Fast forward to the middle of the next day. For that point in time, it would only be speculation for me to say what changed. I do not have nor have I heard that piece of data. 

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by User58953268

[User58953268]

11 hours ago, luv2kroooz said:

No way! I don't know where blame resides because I wasn't there, but it would seem to me the passengers are pretty far down on that list. The gangway owner/operator and NCL have a basic responsibility to ensure operations are conducted in a safe manner. Safety is paramount. What a passenger may or may not want can never override safety.

 

This is the reason why Captains make the decision to divert away from tropical storms and hurricanes even though passengers may be upset by it. I can't imagine a situation where a captain would knowingly sacrifice safety of passengers and crew to meet passenger demands.

 

From the above post, it sounds like the port authority and NCL may have enforced the weight limit in the morning of the first day which resulted in safe operations, yet abandoned this measure in the afternoon of Day 2, when the incident occurred. I wonder if distance to the next port played into the need to accelerate embarkation on the afternoon of Day 2??

 

 

luv2kroooz, 

Agree that obviously.what frustrates passengers does not supersede safety concerns. 

 

I just wanted to offer a couple of clarifications / corrections: 

 

* We don’t know if there was a weight limit for the gangway. It is unknown (at least to me and others I’ve spoken to) how the 1-2 passenger limit was determined.

 

* There was no “rush” having to do with schedule/itinerary at the time the incident occurred. It was probably about 5 hours away from “all aboard” time.

Not only this, but everything had happened on schedule up to this point, and continued to operate on schedule afterwards. We pulled out on time later that evening. 

[User58953268]

12 hours ago, DCGuy64 said:

If what was reported is true, it's possible people complained about the long process of getting off the ship (by restricting it to just two people at a time), so the decision was made to allow many more people on the gangway at the same time. With this being the result. The cynic in me says the same people who might have said "this isn't fair, it's taking too long!" are now blaming NCL for the results of their own impatience.

 

 

 

Just to clarify, those comments about it taking hours to get off the ship were written about the first morning in Panama City. You know how it is when you first pull into port and it seems nearly everyone wants to get off the ship at the same time.

 

The gangway incident occurred the next day, the second day, around 1:30. (We had spent overnight docked at the pier in Panama City. We were there for two days.)

[chengkp75]

Okay, here's a mariner's take on this.

 

The gangway had a load limit on it, every gangway does.  Whether that was the 2 person limit or not, I can't say from this distance.  One thing I do note is that the gangway being in two joined sections creates a weak spot in any unsupported span, and may be why if each section had a higher capacity, they limited it to 2 persons.

 

It appears that an operational decision was made on the second day to increase the capacity of the gangway, and for this the Captain holds complete and ultimate responsibility, and should be reprimanded for his lack of attention to the passengers' safety, as I am sure this gangway was not approved under the company's ISM (International Safety Management) plan, and therefore should not have been allowed, but other ways of handling passenger disembarking should have been worked out.

 

In line with this, from the photos, it would have made sense to me that the passenger gangway should have been moved to the crew gangway location, one deck lower and just aft, and used the ship's gangway.  There is another sideport just forward of the broken gangway, on deck 4 (I think), that is a storing port, and could have easily been used for the crew gangway.  Would this have required moving security equipment and possibly requiring more personnel to handle security, sure, but it would have worked, and been safer from the start, and even after the slow and reportedly "wobbly" initial disembarkation, this should have been investigated as a better alternative.

 

Blame for this (and the ISM doesn't like to assign blame) rests squarely with the ship's Captain.

[genian_travels]

I am the person onboard who first tweeted about this - which was posted in the first comment on this thread.

 

I am a journalist (ex-BBC) and posted what I know to be true from what I personally experienced, what I saw watching the events unfold for 2.5hrs and from eyewitnesses who saw the incident happen.

 

Media that have reported the story have all used my tweets as their primary source of information.

 

The pictures and video I posted are from my balcony on deck 13, so you can’t see the true angle of the collapsed gangway and what deck it’s coming from. However, the gangway was attached to deck 6, beside Q.

 

The morning we arrived in Panama there was a long delay getting people off the ship for excursions. This was because - according to announcements given over the PA system - low tide meant they couldn’t use the usual lower gangways and only one gangway was being used.

 

I had breakfast in the restaurant on deck 6 and when I went to the forward lifts by Q to go back to my cabin after, there appeared to be a lot of disorganisation amongst crew who were trying to manage the large crowd of people all trying to get off the ship from a different point of exit than usual.

 

Later in the day as the tide rose, further gangways were put out on the usual lower decks.

 

That evening, I went to dinner at Q at 7:30pm and saw the gangway was still in place, with crew using it.

 

The following day, the same situation occurred with the tides. I left the ship around 7:45am to go on an excursion and walked off the gangway on deck 6. I noted it wasn’t flat, but I had been on steeper gangways.

 

Clearly as the tide rose during the morning, so did the height and angle of the gangway, fixed to deck 6.

 

When I returned to the ship around 12:45pm, I thought how unusually high and steep the gangway had got. I saw one person on it walking back on, but we were directed to enter via the gangway on deck 5.

 

As mentioned in my tweet, I heard the code alpha for the pier around 1:30pm while I was eating lunch. At 2pm I went back to my cabin and watched events on the pier until 4:30pm.

 

No injured passengers were on the pier at this time. Lots of ship officials were outside taking pictures and speaking to police. The first ambulance arrived at 2:22pm, the second at 2:28pm.

 

Port staff began to try and detach the gangway from the ship after attaching a winch at the top end, with a forklift truck at the other. There was not enough space on the pier to move it in one long piece as passengers were still returning and coaches/people were around - so they folded it over on itself to break it in half. The forklift removed both halves and it was all cleared away at 2:58pm.

 

At 2:59pm the first two passengers (male and female) were taken out to different ambulances. They were both on their backs on gurneys and were responsive. The male had no visible injury, the female had an ice pack on her head.

 

I saw an additional 10 passengers brought out over the next hour - 4 on gurneys, the rest in wheelchairs. All were responsive/moving/talking to paramedics. One man on a gurney was lying on his side with his hip/thigh heavily bandaged. One woman had her left arm in a sling, another had her right foot bandaged. The others had no visible injuries. I saw one man in a wheelchair carrying his passport.  All the injured looked to be aged 65+.

 

Six ambulances turned up in total, but no one got in the last one, which left just after 4pm.

 

After the gangway wreckage was removed, another gangway was put out on deck 4 and two trucks full of produce were offloaded and brought onto the ship.

 

We left port as scheduled at 7pm.

 

I do wonder how they originally planned to get the gangway off deck 6 at departure, as it was so high up…

 

As for eyewitness accounts, one person told me he had just walked up the gangway and heard it collapse as he put his bag down for security. He said 11 passengers were on the gangway at the time.  

 

My cabin neighbour said he had walked down it the previous day and thought the gangway was a bit “bouncy”.

 

Another couple said they had walked down it and could feel it “flexing and bouncing”.

 

Hopefully the above will give a clearer picture as to what happened and why, and reduce any further speculation.

 

I contacted NCL for a press statement - asking specifically for an explanation as to why the gangway collapsed, to confirm how many were injured and the nature of their injuries. I posted their response on Twitter - it answered none of my questions.

Edited November 11, 2022 by genian_travels

[EvanBedar]

12 minutes ago, genian_travels said:

I am the person onboard who first tweeted about this - which was posted in the first comment on this thread.

 

I am a journalist (ex-BBC) and posted what I know to be true from what I personally experienced, what I saw watching the events unfold for 2.5hrs and from eyewitnesses who saw the incident happen.

 

Media that have reported the story have all used my tweets as their primary source of information.

 

The pictures and video I posted are from my balcony on deck 13, so you can’t see the true angle of the collapsed gangway and what deck it’s coming from. However, the gangway was attached to deck 6, beside Q.

 

The morning we arrived in Panama there was a long delay getting people off the ship for excursions. This was because - according to announcements given over the PA system - low tide meant they couldn’t use the usual lower gangways and only one gangway was being used.

 

I had breakfast in the restaurant on deck 6 and when I went to the forward lifts by Q to go back to my cabin after, there appeared to be a lot of disorganisation amongst crew who were trying to manage the large crowd of people all trying to get off the ship from a different point of exit than usual.

 

Later in the day as the tide rose, further gangways were put out on the usual lower decks.

 

That evening, I went to dinner at Q at 7:30pm and saw the gangway was still in place, with crew using it.

 

The following day, the same situation occurred with the tides. I left the ship around 7:45am to go on an excursion and walked off the gangway on deck 6. I noted it wasn’t flat, but I had been on steeper gangways.

 

Clearly as the tide rose during the morning, so did the height and angle of the gangway, fixed to deck 6.

 

When I returned to the ship around 12:45pm, I thought how unusually high and steep the gangway had got. I saw one person on it walking back on, but we were directed to enter via the gangway on deck 5.

 

As mentioned in my tweet, I heard the code alpha for the pier around 1:30pm while I was eating lunch. At 2pm I went back to my cabin and watched events on the pier until 4:30pm.

 

No injured passengers were on the pier at this time. Lots of ship officials were outside taking pictures and speaking to police. The first ambulance arrived at 2:22pm, the second at 2:28pm.

 

Port staff began to try and detach the gangway from the ship after attaching a winch at the top end, with a forklift truck at the other. There was not enough space on the pier to move it in one long piece as passengers were still returning and coaches/people were around - so they folded it over on itself to break it in half. The forklift removed both halves and it was all cleared away at 2:58pm.

 

At 2:59pm the first two passengers (male and female) were taken out to different ambulances. They were both on their backs on gurneys and were responsive. The male had no visible injury, the female had an ice pack on her head.

 

I saw an additional 10 passengers brought out over the next hour - 4 on gurneys, the rest in wheelchairs. All were responsive/moving/talking to paramedics. One man on a gurney was lying on his side with his hip/thigh heavily bandaged. One woman had her left arm in a sling, another had her right foot bandaged. The others had no visible injuries. I saw one man in a wheelchair carrying his passport.  All the injured looked to be aged 65+.

 

Six ambulances turned up in total, but no one got in the last one, which left just after 4pm.

 

After the gangway wreckage was removed, another gangway was put out on deck 4 and two trucks full of produce were offloaded and brought onto the ship.

 

We left port as scheduled at 7pm.

 

I do wonder how they originally planned to get the gangway off deck 6 at departure, as it was so high up…

 

As for eyewitness accounts, one person told me he had just walked up the gangway and heard it collapse as he put his bag down for security. He said 11 passengers were on the gangway at the time.  

 

My cabin neighbour said he had walked down it the previous day and thought the gangway was a bit “bouncy”.

 

Another couple said they had walked down it and could feel it “flexing and bouncing”.

 

Hopefully the above will give a clearer picture as to what happened and why, and reduce any further speculation.

 

I contacted NCL for a press statement - asking specifically for an explanation as to why the gangway collapsed, to confirm how many were injured and the nature of their injuries. I posted their response on Twitter - it answered none of my questions.

A little unsettling that the balance of the injured had to wait 90 minutes to be taken to the hospital, but I suppose they could have been seeing physicians in sickbay.

 

[cb2367]

I happened to see a newsfeed article about this incident on my phone and the main headline was "Passengers Injured as Cruise Ship Collapses Upon Docking." A misleading headline, as a cruise ship wouldn't collapse. From the pictures in this thread though, hard to understand why the gangway would be placed that high up.

 

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/passengers-injured-amid-norweigan-cruise-line-ship-collapse/438938

[eileeshb]

1 hour ago, cb2367 said:

I happened to see a newsfeed article about this incident on my phone and the main headline was "Passengers Injured as Cruise Ship Collapses Upon Docking." A misleading headline, as a cruise ship wouldn't collapse. From the pictures in this thread though, hard to understand why the gangway would be placed that high up.

 

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/passengers-injured-amid-norweigan-cruise-line-ship-collapse/438938

from the reports of people on the ship it seems there was a major tidal effect. Initially the tide was too low for the normal deck 4 gangways so they used the deck 6 attachment, but as the tide rose the angle on the deck 6 gangway increased and they were able to connect the normal deck 4 gangway.  It seems the mistake was leaving the deck 6 gangway in place after deck 4 became usable.  
 

I live on the Atlantic coast of Ireland so I see major tidal extremes regularly. The local port we get tide tables for can have a high of 5.8m to a low of -0.2 (this is the most extreme case) or as little as 3.5m high and 2.2m low.  A 6m swing in tide height is easily a full deck in difference on a ship and enough to muck up gangway structures. 

[hallux]

2 hours ago, eileeshb said:

from the reports of people on the ship it seems there was a major tidal effect.

which seems to be exactly what @genian_travels  described in their post earlier in the thread, just a couple before your post...

[The Traveling Man]

7 hours ago, eileeshb said:

I live on the Atlantic coast of Ireland so I see major tidal extremes regularly. The local port we get tide tables for can have a high of 5.8m to a low of -0.2 (this is the most extreme case) or as little as 3.5m high and 2.2m low.  A 6m swing in tide height is easily a full deck in difference on a ship and enough to muck up gangway structures. 

A six meter sea level shift would be about 20 feet.  That's two full decks worth of tide.

[jbcallender]

On 11/9/2022 at 9:39 PM, shof515 said:

here is a picture of the gangway:

 

i somewhat hate to say but it kind of looks like a fun slide to get off the ship. that could be a neat way to leave the ship

That's an awfully long span for what appears to be about a six inch I-Beam of aluminum on eaither side of the treads.  Even in pristine condition it appears to have been quite steep for all but the heartiest of passengers.

[realnice46]

1 hour ago, jbcallender said:

That's an awfully long span for what appears to be about a six inch I-Beam of aluminum on eaither side of the treads.  Even in pristine condition it appears to have been quite steep for all but the heartiest of passengers.

I agree it looks more like a slide than a gangway.

[Nuka]

11 hours ago, The Traveling Man said:

A six meter sea level shift would be about 20 feet.  That's two full decks worth of tide.

Agreed. The tidal sea level changes are not unknown events -- the risks to safety were not handled well IMO. Hope the PAX are recovering from their injuries. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Nuka

[cruisequeen4ever]

How scary! I hope that they investigate the root cause and make sure it never happens again.

[genian_travels]

On 11/12/2022 at 3:42 PM, cruisequeen4ever said:

How scary! I hope that they investigate the root cause and make sure it never happens again.

I think the other issue was that this is a new port terminal. I gather ships normally tender in here, but we docked - I presume for the first time as the terminal is nowhere near finished yet.

Aside from the pier itself, nothing else was completed and you weren’t allowed to walk around it/to the port exit yourself as it was a building site. I did see an air bridge further up the pier, but it wasn’t connected to anything. 

 

As it was the ship’s first time docked there, it’s plausible the crew were unaware of how high the pier would be alongside the ship during low tide on arrival - and how high the tide would rise to. That would be consistent with the disorganisation I saw with getting a suitable gangway out in the morning and getting people off the ship for excursions.

 

I contacted NCL’s press team yesterday asking for an updated statement on the conditions of the injured, but they have yet to respond.

 

 

[d9704011]

On 11/11/2022 at 11:05 PM, jbcallender said:

That's an awfully long span for what appears to be about a six inch I-Beam of aluminum on eaither side of the treads.  Even in pristine condition it appears to have been quite steep for all but the heartiest of passengers.

Don't you think that's after the gangway collapsed?

[chengkp75]

27 minutes ago, genian_travels said:

As it was the ship’s first time docked there, it’s plausible the crew were unaware of how high the pier would be alongside the ship during low tide on arrival - and how high the tide would rise to.

That is not plausible at all.  The bridge has books, tables, and electronics that will predict the state of tide every hour of every day for every port in the world.

[swmichigan cruiser]

On 11/11/2022 at 8:45 AM, genian_travels said:

I am the person onboard who first tweeted about this - which was posted in the first comment on this thread.

 

I am a journalist (ex-BBC) and posted what I know to be true from what I personally experienced, what I saw watching the events unfold for 2.5hrs and from eyewitnesses who saw the incident happen.

 

Media that have reported the story have all used my tweets as their primary source of information.

 

The pictures and video I posted are from my balcony on deck 13, so you can’t see the true angle of the collapsed gangway and what deck it’s coming from. However, the gangway was attached to deck 6, beside Q.

 

The morning we arrived in Panama there was a long delay getting people off the ship for excursions. This was because - according to announcements given over the PA system - low tide meant they couldn’t use the usual lower gangways and only one gangway was being used.

 

I had breakfast in the restaurant on deck 6 and when I went to the forward lifts by Q to go back to my cabin after, there appeared to be a lot of disorganisation amongst crew who were trying to manage the large crowd of people all trying to get off the ship from a different point of exit than usual.

 

Later in the day as the tide rose, further gangways were put out on the usual lower decks.

 

That evening, I went to dinner at Q at 7:30pm and saw the gangway was still in place, with crew using it.

 

The following day, the same situation occurred with the tides. I left the ship around 7:45am to go on an excursion and walked off the gangway on deck 6. I noted it wasn’t flat, but I had been on steeper gangways.

 

Clearly as the tide rose during the morning, so did the height and angle of the gangway, fixed to deck 6.

 

When I returned to the ship around 12:45pm, I thought how unusually high and steep the gangway had got. I saw one person on it walking back on, but we were directed to enter via the gangway on deck 5.

 

As mentioned in my tweet, I heard the code alpha for the pier around 1:30pm while I was eating lunch. At 2pm I went back to my cabin and watched events on the pier until 4:30pm.

 

No injured passengers were on the pier at this time. Lots of ship officials were outside taking pictures and speaking to police. The first ambulance arrived at 2:22pm, the second at 2:28pm.

 

Port staff began to try and detach the gangway from the ship after attaching a winch at the top end, with a forklift truck at the other. There was not enough space on the pier to move it in one long piece as passengers were still returning and coaches/people were around - so they folded it over on itself to break it in half. The forklift removed both halves and it was all cleared away at 2:58pm.

 

At 2:59pm the first two passengers (male and female) were taken out to different ambulances. They were both on their backs on gurneys and were responsive. The male had no visible injury, the female had an ice pack on her head.

 

I saw an additional 10 passengers brought out over the next hour - 4 on gurneys, the rest in wheelchairs. All were responsive/moving/talking to paramedics. One man on a gurney was lying on his side with his hip/thigh heavily bandaged. One woman had her left arm in a sling, another had her right foot bandaged. The others had no visible injuries. I saw one man in a wheelchair carrying his passport.  All the injured looked to be aged 65+.

 

Six ambulances turned up in total, but no one got in the last one, which left just after 4pm.

 

After the gangway wreckage was removed, another gangway was put out on deck 4 and two trucks full of produce were offloaded and brought onto the ship.

 

We left port as scheduled at 7pm.

 

I do wonder how they originally planned to get the gangway off deck 6 at departure, as it was so high up…

 

As for eyewitness accounts, one person told me he had just walked up the gangway and heard it collapse as he put his bag down for security. He said 11 passengers were on the gangway at the time.  

 

My cabin neighbour said he had walked down it the previous day and thought the gangway was a bit “bouncy”.

 

Another couple said they had walked down it and could feel it “flexing and bouncing”.

 

Hopefully the above will give a clearer picture as to what happened and why, and reduce any further speculation.

 

I contacted NCL for a press statement - asking specifically for an explanation as to why the gangway collapsed, to confirm how many were injured and the nature of their injuries. I posted their response on Twitter - it answered none of my questions.

Very accurate account. We were also on deck 13 probably very close to you. And saw pretty much what you saw

[broberts]

https://magicseaweed.com/Panama-La-Vieja-Panama-City-Surf-Report/472/Tide/?start=1667926800&end=1668790800

 

 

[njhorseman]

1 hour ago, genian_travels said:

I think the other issue was that this is a new port terminal. I gather ships normally tender in here, but we docked - I presume for the first time as the terminal is nowhere near finished yet

The pier and its docking facilities have been in use for some time. Some ships docked there last year. It's the other facilities, particularly the cruise terminal building that haven't been completed.