Logistics giants MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company and CMA CGM have thrown their weight behind efforts to provide aid to the tens of thousands of earthquake victims in Turkey.
On 16 February the 21,518-gt MSC Aurelia (built 1980) left Naples towards southeast Turkey, carrying 60 pallets of medical supplies, food, hygiene items, warm clothing, blankets and children’s toys, MSC said in a statement.
Fifty boxes of thermal shirts donated by the Vatican are also on board.
According to ship trackers, the MSC Aurelia is scheduled to arrive on 20 February at the port of Iskenderun.
Turkey’s worst-hit terminal has shut down all operations except for humanitarian aid.
Cargo vessels arrive there day and night, providing material collected by donors both within and outside the country. The effort is coordinated by the Turkish government in cooperation with the Turkish Shipowners’ Association.
According to Turkey’s general shipping directorate, 15 vessels have completed humanitarian voyages to Iskenderun and the nearby port of Mersin since a wave of deadly earthquakes struck the area on the night of 6 February.
On their ballasting legs away from Iskenderun, vessels such as the 19,000-dwt Transfighter (built 2001) have evacuated 1,334 earthquake victims.
More than 44,000 people lost their lives in Turkey, according to the latest count, which is rising by the hour.
Tens of thousands survived but saw their homes destroyed.
Ships will play a key part in housing some of the homeless.
MSC said that the MSC Aurelia will remain docked in port in Turkey “at the authorities’ disposal to provide accommodation”.
Normally used as a passenger and vehicle ferry, the ship offers more than 1,000 beds, as well as leisure spaces including a restaurant, a cinema and video-game arcades.
More such ships are on the way.
TradeWinds has already reported about Turkey’s Karadeniz Holding planning to send two vessels to the region with the capacity to host 3,000 victims — the Karadeniz Lifeship Suheyla Sultan and the Karadeniz Lifeship Rauf Bey.
The latter ship is the former 19,638-gt Stena Explorer, which Karadeniz bought in 2015 with plans to convert it into a floating office facility.
From Paris and Piraeus
Big logistics companies can offer emergency housing by other means as well.
MSC said it is arranging the transport of thousands of empty containers in Turkey to accommodate displaced families.
The Swiss liner company’s local Turkish operation is already using such containers to house 300 of its own homeless employees and families.
CMA CGM, a big French liner, helps by air.
Five days after the earthquakes struck, the company sent an aircraft to Turkey at its own cost, lifting a field hospital to be deployed by French civil security.
Aid is also arriving from the other side of the Aegean.
The 2,200-ceu Neptune Okeanis (built 2005), a car carrier owned by the president of the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS) Melina Travlos, deviated from its course to carry to Iskenderun 250 cubic metres of blankets, bedding, heaters and medicines collected by Greek donors.
“We stand by our neighbors,” Travlos said as the ship was departing Greece.