A large floating dock that was built in 1911 but still in use on Norway’s West Coast suddenly capsized and sank Monday morning. Two workers on the dock landed in the water but were quickly rescued before it sank out of sight.
The dock was located at Ågotnes west of Bergen, right where a naval vessel had sailed after colliding with a small pleasure craft on Sunday. The weather was sunny and clear, and the seas calm, when both accidents occurred.
“We can’t understand how this could happen,” claimed the chief executive of the firm CCB that runs the industrial area in Ågotnes. Initial reports from the scene stated that a crane on the dock had fallen over.
A fishing boat had just entered the dock to check some of it equipment. “Then we were told to slowly back out of the dock again,” Sigmund Våge of the fishing vessel Norwegian Gannet, told NRK. “After that I don’t really know what happened. We fortunately were clear of the dock (when it capsized) and everything is fine with us.”
The dock had been berthed for many years at Laksevåg, also in Hordaland County, before it was towed to Ågotnes in 2017.
newsinenglish.no staff
