There’s been a rather unique incident over in Canada recently which despite being quite enormously serious to say the very least is being likened by local press to the mother of all computer games. Over the past week or so, engineers and salvage crews have been working frantically on the Gorge Waterway to try and prevent as many crushed cars and other scrap metal items sliding less than majestically into the water. 
Suffice to say, it’s a pretty unusual and compelling sight, which explains why hundreds of locals had been stopping by from time to time to catch a glimpse of the operation in progress. What those involved are basically trying to do is to remove as much of the cargo as possible from the barge and transfer it to another boat, which even during ideal circumstances would be a rather painstaking and long winded task. In this instance however, the boat is leaning at a rather precarious angle and a quite sizeable arsenal of scrap metal products have already found their way into the water.
As such, salvage crews are now warning that it will be several weeks before the clean-up operation can be fully completed.
In the meantime, and not to make light of what’s clearly a very unfortunate situation, onlookers have said that from that perspective, it all looks strikingly similar to a classic arcade game…albeit on an altogether more enormous scale. You know the infuriating claw machines where an above-hanging claw pretends to grab prizes but never manages to get hold of anything? Well, that’s pretty much the story here as the huge claw of the crane tries in vain to grab the cars perched on rather steep angles.
The company behind the transportation project which clearly went quiet disastrously wrong goes by the name of Schnitzer Steel. In the wake of the accident, they’ve spoken openly about their intention to move as quickly as possible and to invest as heavily as necessary in the required machinery to ensure that not only is the boat made mobile again, but that all cars are successfully recovered from the water. And while there’s clearly a rather disconcerting coating of oil and fuel visible on the surface of the water, Schnitzer Steel insists it is purely residual and of no great threat to the environment as each and every scrap car on the shipment was and is required by law to be fully drained of all fluids prior to being transported.
Unsurprisingly, officials from Transport Canada are now exploring the possibility that proper loading procedures and general transport regulations may not have been properly followed, resulting in the barge ending up in its current predicament. They have however said that the number one priority is that of cleaning up the mess before things can move on to deciding who to point the finger of blame at.
Schnitzer Steel has not however been able to identify the actual cause of the accident – an investigation is underway.
