Accident - Excavator stuck in the mudflats off Norderney
At work on the Mole on the island of Norderney, a dredger got stuck in the Wadden Sea of the North Sea. During final work on the dike to widen the South Mole, it was planned to collect gravel from the national park at low tide on a Wednesday. Numerous attempts to retrieve it at low tide failed, as NPorts reported on Thursday. Oil spills had been laid out and the tonnage lifter of the Water Police was positioned. No oil or fuel was leaking out at the moment. No one was injured, it was further stated.
Police and fire departments were on site, as were authorities such as the Water Police, the Waterways and Shipping Administration, and the Chemical Accident Reporting Office of the State Agency for Water Management, Coastal Protection and Nature Conservation (NLWKN). Currently, there are various considerations for retrieving the dredger. It had slipped into the mud and was only about hundred meters from the shipping lane of the ships at an angle.
One option for retrieving the dredger, according to information from the Aurich Police Inspection, is to wait for the next high tide at night on Friday and then bring the dredger to a position with air cushions from which a crane could lift it.
The dredger, stuck in Lower Saxony's Wadden Sea near Norderney, had initially planned to collect gravel from the national park during a Wednesday low tide for the widening of the South Mole. Regrettably, numerous attempts to retrieve it during that time proved unsuccessful, leading to concerns near the North Sea shipping lane.
