A cargo ship that has been on hearth since Tuesday close to an island north of the Netherlands was nonetheless burning on Friday, the Dutch Coast Guard mentioned, because it emerged that the vessel had been carrying considerably extra electrical automobiles than initially reported.
The reason for the hearth aboard the ship, the Fremantle Highway, stays unclear. The 656-foot vessel was carrying about 3,000 automobiles, and whereas officers initially reported that it had 25 electrical automobiles amongst them, Edwin Granneman, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, mentioned on Friday that whereas he couldn’t verify an actual quantity, it was in all probability within the a whole lot.
The Dutch newswire ANP reported that there have been 498 electrical automobiles on board, citing the ship constitution firm Okay Line.
One Fremantle Highway crew member died and 22 others had been injured, officers mentioned this week. After the ship began burning on Tuesday, a few of the crew members jumped into the water and had been rescued in lifeboats, in line with the Coast Guard.
Initially, the crew members had tried to place out the hearth themselves. “The fire kept spreading,” the Coast Guard wrote on its weblog. Crew members had been evacuated with the assistance of helicopters and lifeboats.
“The fire is still raging, and there is still a lot of smoke development,” the Coast Guard wrote in an replace on Thursday night time native time, including that the depth of the blaze appeared to be diminishing. As of Thursday night time, it nonetheless was not secure to carry a salvage crew onto the ship. The scenario is steady, the Coast Guard mentioned.
The ship is connected to a tugboat to be sure that it doesn’t impede delivery routes and to verify different ships can go at a secure distance. The Fremantle Highway was on its method from the German port of Bremerhaven to Singapore.
The hearth on the Fremantle Highway comes weeks after two firefighters died in a hearth on an Italian cargo ship that was loaded with 1,200 automobiles at Port Newark in New Jersey. That hearth burned for 5 days. In March of final 12 months, a cargo ship that was carrying about 4,000 automobiles sank about 253 miles off the Azores after it burned for 2 weeks.
Source: www.nytimes.com