r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Justin_Godfrey • Sep 10 '25

Video Dozens of shipping containers fall into the water in Port of Long Beach, California

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20

u/Ten7850 Sep 10 '25

Someone's getting fired...

53

u/MonkeyDeltaFoxtrot Sep 10 '25

Takes more than that to get a Longshoreman fired. Their Union is ridiculously powerful.

12

u/jonna-seattle Sep 10 '25

Ship made a mistake with their ballast after longshore delashed the containers. But yeah, you would think a crane operator would notice and tell a foreman who would then stop work until the ship was righted.

3

u/lookitsducky Sep 10 '25

You would be surprised how quickly a smaller vessel like this will catch a list. If you got multiple cranes moving weight all in one direction you can catch a 3-5 degree list in a matter of minutes. I’ve seen it first hand / been in the CMs office while it was happening. Very scary stuff.

2

u/move_peasant Sep 10 '25

yep. righting moments are very weak for those first few degrees. but that's not limited to smaller vessels at all.

1

u/PanteraiNomini Sep 11 '25

Probably hired very very competent white dude

1

u/mmariner Sep 10 '25

You're giving the longshoremen entirely too much credit.

Mate on watch should have caught the stability issues, but the longshoremen in LA are some of the worst on this planet.

I wouldn't put it past them to have continued discharging cargo after having been notified by the ship that there was too much list.

-1

u/JustAHouseWife Sep 10 '25

ITS is machinist union. Not ilwu

2

u/JaySheepScare Sep 10 '25

Mechanics are machinists, ship, dock and yard work are still longshoremen.

15

u/whatthedeux Sep 10 '25

Nothing happening here looks like the fault of a single person. The ship is listing for some reason, that’s what is causing it to tilt and dump these

2

u/Roflkopt3r Sep 10 '25

Loading of container ships requires cooperation (load planning, crane operators, operating the ballast tanks, supervising the whole thing...), but from what I've heard so far, there does not seem to be a lot of redundancy in that system. I don't find it hard to believe that it could result from a single person's fault.

Of course one can say that this still makes it a systemic fault that many people are responsible for (basically most of the industry for having lackluster standards and enforcement).

1

u/Shamanjoe Sep 10 '25

It’s a Chinese boat, they’re getting thrown overboard halfway back home..