Man dies in ro-ro blaze
A crew member on-board a roll-on, roll-off vessel has died after a fire engulfed it off the coast of the Netherlands.
Het Algemeen Dagblad, a Dutch newspaper, has reported that the ship was carrying 2,857 cars, of which 25 were electric vehicles (EVs). One of the EVs may have caught on fire, according to news agency ANP, although that has yet to be confirmed.
Mercedes-Benz says around 350 of its cars were on the Panama-registered Fremantle Highway when the blaze occurred.
It started on the night of July 25 when the vessel was making its way from Bremerhaven in Germany to Egypt. It was 27km north of the Dutch island of Ameland when the fire took hold.
Rescue ships sprayed water onto the burning boat to cool it down but using too much water risked causing the Fremantle Highway to sink, says the Dutch coastguard. A salvage vessel was hooked onto it to stop it from drifting into shipping lanes before it was towed out.
“There was lot of smoke and the fire spread quickly, much faster than expected,” Willard Molenaar, of the Royal Dutch Rescue Company. “People on-board had to get off quickly. We fished them out of the water.”
Dutch broadcaster NOS reports some people were injured jumping into the sea, while one crew member died in the flames.
Shoei Kisen, the Japanese ship-leasing company that manages the Fremantle Highway, has been working with the authorities to extinguish the fire. The 10-year-old vessel is around 200 metres long and can carry as many as 4,000 cars, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
This incident is the latest of several fires in recent times 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. And fire destroyed thousands of luxury cars on the Felicity Ace, which sank off the coast of Portugal’s Azores Island in March 2022.
The International Maritime Organisation, which sets out regulations for safety at sea, plans to evaluate new measures for ships transporting EVs next year because of the growing number of fires on cargo ships, reports Automotive News Europe.
New rules under consideration could take years to implement. But they may include specifications on the types of water extinguishers available on boats and limitations on the amount a battery can be charged, which may impact flammability.
(Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this report. Photo: Coastguard Netherlands)
