Ship carrying nearly 3,000 cars ablaze off Dutch coast, crew member dead

AMSTERDAM, (Reuters): A fire blazed on a cargo ship off the Dutch coast with nearly 3,000 vehicles on board on Wednesday, killing one member of the crew and injuring several others, the coastguard said.

Several crew members jumped overboard after the fire began on Tuesday night on the 199-metre Panama-registered Fremantle Highway as it was en route from Germany to Egypt.

The Indian Embassy in the Netherlands said in a social media post the fire had “resulted in the death of an Indian seafarer and injuries to the crew”, and that it was in touch with family of the deceased. Japan’s Shoei Kisen, which owns the ship, said the entire crew of 21 was Indian.

Rescue ships sprayed water onto the burning vessel to cool it down, but using too much water risked its sinking, the Dutch coastguard said. It attached to a salvage vessel, to prevent it drifting.

The fire might last for several days, Dutch news agency ANP reported, citing the coastguard. Smoke continued to billow from the vessel near the northern Dutch island of Ameland.

The fire is not under control.

“It’s a very hard fire to extinguish, possibly because of the cargo the ship was transporting,” said Edwin Versteeg, a spokesperson for the Dutch Department of Waterways and Public Works.

The coastguard said on its website the cause of the fire was unknown, but a coastguard spokesperson had earlier said it began near an electric car. Roughly 25 out of 2,857 vehicles on the ship were electric.

The International Maritime Organisation, which regulates safety standards at sea, plans to evaluate new measures for ships transporting electric vehicles next year in light of the growing number of fires on cargo ships, a spokesperson said.

“Electric cars burn just as much as combustion engine cars. When batteries overheat and a so-called ‘thermal runaway’ occurs, then it gets dangerous,” said Uwe-Peter Schieder, master mariner and representative of the German Insurance Association.

“A chemical reaction in the battery produces gases which inflate the battery.”

New rules under consideration could take years to implement. They may include specifications on the types of water extinguishers available on boats. They will also include limitations of battery charging, which will impact flammability.

Around 350 of the vehicles on board were Mercedes-Benz cars, the German company said.

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HELICOPTER AIRLIFT
The coastguard said the Fremantle, which had departed from the port of Bremerhaven, had been towed out of shipping lanes. It was 27 km (17 miles) north of Ameland when the fire started.

It spread so quickly that seven crew members leaped overboard, said Willard Molenaar of the Royal Dutch Rescue Company (KNRM), who was among the first at the scene.

Molenaar told NOS some people were injured jumping into the water, while one crew member had died in the flames.

“There was lot of smoke and the fire spread quickly, much faster than expected,” he said. “The people on board had to get off quickly … We fished them out of the water.”

A helicopter airlifted the remaining members of the crew off the burning ship. The injured suffered breathing problems, burns, and broken bones, local Dutch authorities said.

Coastguard spokesperson Edwin Granneman said salvage experts were trying to work out the next steps for the burning boat.

Ship owner Shoei Kisen said it was working with Dutch authorities and management company Wallem Ship Management to extinguish the fire.

The incident was the latest of several fires recently on car carriers.

Earlier this month, two New Jersey firefighters were killed and five injured battling a blaze on a cargo ship carrying hundreds of vehicles. There were no electric cars on that vessel, the operator said.

Another fire destroyed thousands of luxury cars, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, on a ship off the coast of Portugal’s Azores islands in February last year.