Car Transport Ship Fire Could 'Burn for Days' Off Netherlands
The cargo aboard the vessel includes electric vehicles and a coastguard official told Dutch media that authorities were looking into whether the fire had started with one of them.
Rescue personnel received a call early Wednesday reporting a fire on the Fremantle Highway, a Panamanian-registered ship with 3,000 vehicles on board, about 14.5 nautical miles off the northern Dutch island of Ameland.
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All 23 crew members were evacuated from the ship, but one person died and several were injured, the coastguard said.
At least seven jumped overboard and were rescued from the water, while the rest were airlifted by helicopter.
"The fire could still burn for days," a coastguard official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP. "The ship is being cooled to keep it stable. Only the side of the ship is being sprayed, not the deck."
A coastguard official told the NOS public broadcaster that the fire was possibly sparked by an electric vehicle, one of some 25 on board.
"We are taking into account all scenarios," the official said.
The Fremantle Highway is currently close to Ameland, one of four ecologically sensitive Frisian islands, situated in the Waddensee area just north of the Dutch mainland. It is an 18,500-tonne car carrier ship and was sailing between Bremerhaven in Germany and Port Said in Egypt when the blaze broke out, according to the marinetraffic.com website.
The most serious incident in recent times off the busy Dutch coast happened in December 2012 when the Bahamian-flagged car carrier Baltic Ice collided with a container ship and sank. Eleven sailors were killed in that incident.
