Timeline of the fire on the Fremantle Highway:
- 23:45: Vessel Fremantle Highway reports to the Coast Guard that there is a fire on board. The vessel is currently sailing 27 kilometres north of Ameland.
- 00.30: The skipper of the KNRM rescue ship from Ameland is alerted. "We were all asleep and were paged out of our beds".
- 03.49: Shipping company Noordgat reports that their ship Hurricane is working with KNRM to rescue the crew of the burning vessel. Tug Hunter is on its way.
- 04:30: The Coast Guard reports that all 23 crew members have been removed from the burning vessel.
- 06:51: The Coast Guard reports that those on board have been taken to Lauwersoog and Eelde airport. There they have been taken care of by ambulance personnel. It is also reported that there is one fatality.
- 09.00: The salvage vessel Hunter of shipping company Noordgat has an emergency connection to the ship, keeping the vessel in a controlled position.
- 09.49: Rijkswaterstaat is consulting with the Coastguard and salvage companies, among others, on what to do with the ship if it needs to be salvaged.
- 11.26: The Coast Guard reports that the situation is unchanged. There is still a lot of smoke. Several scenarios are being worked out.
- 13.10: Rijkswaterstaat reports that the ship's Japanese shipping company has ordered a salvage company to salvage the Fremantle Highway as soon as possible. Rijkswaterstaat has a vessel on site monitoring.
- 16:10: A temporary no-fly zone is in place over the burning freighter at the request of the Coast Guard. Only emergency agencies are allowed to enter the area.
- 17:45: It is still unclear when people will be able to board to extinguish the fire. The ship is currently being cooled with seawater, but to really put out the fire, firefighters need to board. This is too dangerous so far.
KNRM=Royal Dutch Rescue Society
Rijkswaterstaat =Department of Waterways and Public Works
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
I just red a member of some disaster command in charge of the operation said a sinking of the ship now is a likely scenario.
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That would be a disaster for the waddengebied (tidal flats), I haven't heard anything about it all that the ship is slightly listing.
More environmental danger comes from the fuels and lubricating oil in the engines and tanks of the thousands of fossil cars on board (though it is questionable how much of that remains after possibly days of fire). And from the fuel oil the ship sails on. The Coast Guard reckons the ship will sink, leading to "enormous damage, including to the environment", according to a spokesman. Rijkswaterstaat sent an oil spill response vessel on Wednesday to minimise the impact of any oil spill.
The rules for transporting electric cars at sea should be tightened. That is what the Royal Association of Dutch Shipowners (KVNR) says in response to the fire on the car transporter Fremantle Highway north of Ameland. On board are some three thousand cars, some of which are electrically powered. The ship has been on fire since midnight, possibly due to an electric car. Once such a car catches fire, it is very difficult to put it out. "It's a headache," says KVNR chairman Jan Valkier. "We had a similar accident last year in the middle of the ocean, where a ship completely burned out and sank."
The UN International Maritime Organisation is currently working on tightened regulations for electric cars at sea, but it is not clear when they will come. "Hurry up with those regulations to prevent these kinds of accidents in the future," is Valkier's appeal. The KVNR would like rules on how many electric cars are allowed on board a ship. "And if a fire does occur, what do you do on board a ship? These are all things that need to be examined and tightened up." But why is putting out electric cars so difficult? Briefly, the battery is very well protected from collisions and contact with water, making it difficult to reach it with extinguishing water. Another problem: once a battery has burned out, the fire can re-ignite. Cooling battery cells from the outside is very difficult, says Yvonne Stassen, spokesperson at the Netherlands Institute for Public Safety. "The only way to prevent the battery from reheating is to immerse the battery pack in water for a long time.
The Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (NIVP) wrote a report on fighting incidents involving electric cars on ships. Among other things, it states that ship personnel and firefighters must be able to act with lightning speed in such fires. "In addition, they must have specialist skills and tools." If that is not there and the fire is already advanced, the only thing left is complete evacuation of the ship. The latter happened at the Fremantle Highway. Of the 23 crew members, 22 were brought to safety; one crew member died. Meanwhile, it is clear that extinguishing the ship could take days or even weeks. "You have to let the electric cars burn out, which can take a long time," says fire safety professor Ruud van Herpen (TU Eindhoven). So sometimes an electric car is put in an immersion tank with water for weeks. So the other option is to let the battery burn out. "You cannot cut off the fire from oxygen, because a fire in a battery can burn out without oxygen," he says.
Therefore, speed is very important when extinguishing an electric car. "With a rapid report, it is still possible to make a deployment to extinguish the fire. Once the incident has spread and escalated, there are virtually no repressive options left on the open sea," says the NIVP. Prevention is therefore important, but also a difficult task, says Van Herpen. "Reducing the risk to 0 percent does not exist. A normal car also starts a fire in a car park because it overheats." There are, however, options to reduce the fire risk in an electric car. For example, by not charging the battery before transport and keeping it empty. Moreover, there are gains to be made when distributing electric cars on a cargo ship, says the fire safety expert. "It is not wise to put all the cars next to each other, as they will ignite each other. Making smaller compartments helps to fight the fire faster and save time to tow a ship to a port."