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Europe|Cargo Ship Crashes Into Man’s Yard After Crewman Fell Asleep, Police Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/world/europe/norway-ship-crash-backyard.html
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A retiree living along a Norwegian fjord woke up on Thursday morning because his neighbor was pounding on his door, telling him to look outside. The ship just missed his house.
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By Henrik Pryser Libell
Reporting from Oslo, Norway
Published May 22, 2025Updated May 23, 2025, 1:50 p.m. ET
Johan Helberg woke up on Thursday morning to find his backyard view of a Norwegian fjord transformed into the side of a giant ship.
A cargo ship, the NCL Salten, had run aground at about 5 a.m. on Thursday, barely missing his house on the shore in Byneset, a part of the city of Trondheim in central Norway.
The police said on Friday that their investigation was focusing on the officer guiding the ship, saying that he told them he had fallen asleep before the crash.
Mr. Helberg had slept through it all until alerted by a neighbor. “I was sleeping soundly, deeply, and then I heard a dinging sound, which I wondered might be my doorbell,” he said in an interview on Thursday night. “I thought, who in the world rings the doorbell at 5:45 in the morning? I looked out the window, and he said: ‘Haven’t you seen the ship?’”
The ship was towering over the house, having missed the bedroom by only five or six yards. Had its vector been slightly different, Mr. Helberg said, the ship could have “picked up speed and plowed into the house. It’s completely surreal.”
“I impressed myself by staying cool,” said Mr. Helberg, a retired museum director. “I have seen and been through worse.”
