The northern terminal handled nothing for twenty-three days. On Thursday it worked a full shift for the first time since the closure, moving eleven hundred boxes with two of its four cranes. Omar Haddad spent the morning on the quay.
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First light at the northern port
Eight frames from the first working morning after the terminal reopened, shot between four and nine.
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04:12 — The eastern quay before the shift. Two of the four cranes have been out of service since the closure; parts for the others are still at the border.
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05:40 — Aziz Berrada has worked this quay for twenty-two years. “Twenty-three days is the longest it has ever stopped,” he said. “Not even the storm year did that.”
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05:58 — The inshore fleet, which kept working throughout, ties up in the old basin on the far side of the breakwater.
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06:30 — Shed four. Most of what is stacked here arrived before the closure and has been sitting for three weeks waiting for a road that was open.
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07:05 — The rail link took the first train out at seven. Rail moves about a fifth of the terminal's volume; the rest goes by road through the corridor.
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07:20 — Looking back at the inner basin. The terminal ran lights through the whole closure to keep the insurance valid.
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08:15 — Farah Idrissi in the cabin of crane two, forty metres above the quay. A full container cycle takes her about ninety seconds.
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08:50 — The Kestrel Bay clears the outer mole for the southern port, the first departure of the day and the first in more than three weeks.
The terminal expects to be back to two full shifts within a fortnight if the corridor stays open. Its operator would not comment on the fuel annex.
