One crew member has died and 22 others have been injured in a fireplace on a big cargo vessel loaded with practically 3,000 automobiles off the Dutch island of Ameland within the North Sea, officers stated on Wednesday.
The fireplace was reported simply earlier than midnight on Tuesday and was nonetheless burning on Wednesday, the Dutch Coast Guard stated. Video posted by the Coast Guard confirmed smoke billowing from the 656-foot vessel, as one of many many ships that responded to the fireplace doused it with water.
Lea Versteeg, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, advised The Associated Press that the cargo ship, known as the Fremantle Highway, had been carrying 2,857 automobiles, together with 25 electrical automobiles.
The reason behind the fireplace was not recognized, the Coast Guard stated, including that specialists from a marine salvage firm had been assessing the state of affairs, which it described as “stable at the moment.”
The Coast Guard stated the ship, which had simply left the German port of Bremerhaven, was about 17 miles north of Ameland, one of many West Frisian Islands off the north coast of the Netherlands. It was carrying 23 crew members when the fireplace broke out.
After it began burning, among the crew members jumped into the water and had been rescued in lifeboats, the Coast Guard stated. One crew member died, it stated, including that it was not instantly clear how.
Twenty-two different crew members had been handled for respiratory issues, burns and damaged bones, officers stated. The crew member who died was Indian, in line with the Indian Embassy within the Netherlands, which stated it was in contact with the sailor’s household and with 20 of the injured sailors.
The Dutch Coast Guard stated that it was involved that pouring an excessive amount of water onto the ship to extinguish the fireplace might trigger it to change into unstable. It was not but potential, the company added, to drop firefighters onto the vessel to battle the fireplace.
Ameland is close to the Wadden Sea, a UNESCO World Heritage website off Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands that the United Nations describes as the biggest unbroken system of intertidal sand and dust flats on the planet.
Considered one of many world’s most essential areas for migratory birds, the Wadden Sea can be residence to marine mammals such because the harbor seal, grey seal and harbor porpoise.
Officials from the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management stated they had been intently concerned within the response to the fireplace.
“Together with the Coast Guard and salvage companies, we are looking at what should happen if the ship has to be towed away and salvaged,” the officers stated in a press release. “We will do everything we can to limit the damage to people and the environment as much as possible.”
It was not instantly clear what sort of automobiles had been on the ship, though Volkswagen launched a press release expressing “great sadness” {that a} crew member had died, including that it was unable to supply additional info.
The fireplace got here simply weeks after two firefighters had been killed in a fireplace aboard an Italian cargo ship that was loaded with 1,200 automobiles at Port Newark in New Jersey. The persistence of that fireside, which burned for 5 days, led to hypothesis that among the automobiles that the ship had been carrying had been electrical automobiles with lithium ion batteries.
But Beth Rooney, the port director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stated this month that the ship’s manifest indicated that there have been no electrical automobiles on board.
In March 2022, a cargo ship that was carrying about 4,000 automobiles sank about 253 miles off the Azores after it burned for 2 weeks. That ship, the Felicity Ace, had been at sea for six days after leaving Emden, Germany, for the port of Davisville, R.I., when a fireplace erupted within the cargo maintain. No crew members had been injured.
Source: www.nytimes.com