The launch of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship last year looked like it went perfectly, except holy crap it looked like it exploded and killed a lady. Everyone survived, there were just injuries. So what happened?
The NOAA's ship the Reuben Lasker launched on June 16, 2012 at Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wisconsin. Pamela Lasker, the daughter of the pioneering fisheries scientist for whom the ship was named, christened the boat in some pretty sweet lab goggles, the boat totes looked like it was going to fall over, but then it rights itself in dramatic fashion. As far as ship launches go, this looked like a good one.
One video from Momentum Media & Mktg, LLC picked up no less than 333,000 views.
The NOAA posted their own video racking up just under 30,000 views.
Another video posted just after the launch didn't gain many views, but it showed something a little unusual. While the other videos show the ship from the front and the side, this one showed the rear.
Look closely and you'll see what appear to be people running for cover after the launch.
Now the video at the top, possibly first posted by Jason Bundoff is going viral as it finally shows that the people standing behind the ship were showered with what seem to be deadly fragments of wood.
Reddit poster djt832 claimed to have attended the launch stated that the person was not killed, but just knocked unconscious.
Why was there wood in the first place? Djt832 explained that the ship's rails were made of wood, and when spectators were allowed to be too close, somebody got hit by the shards.
I may have been at this ship launch. If it is the same one, the person did not die, but was knocked unconscious.
The boats normally have steel rails welded to their hulls that ride along the metal bleacher looking things when the boat is set free. After the launch these are obviously removed. However, with this boat design, they were unable to attach these steel rails and had to use wooden ones instead. I have a friend that works for the shipyard and basically someone made a huge misjudgement and the wood split and flew everywhere, as you can obviously see from the video. After this incident viewers were no longer allowed to be so close to the launches.
Now you know what happened to the person filming this video, you know what ship it was that got launched, and you know not to stand right near a humongous ship crashing into a body of water. Let's keep that last bit in mind next time we go to a ship launch.