The crew of a freight ship carrying 3,000 vehicles to Mexico, including 800 electric vehicles, abandoned the ship after they could not control the fire on board the ship in the waters Aleutian Island Sain.
According to photos of the American coast guards, the great fumes of smoke were initially visible on the stern of the ship, which came from the deck loaded with electric vehicles and Wednesday's statement of the ship managing the ship, in London of the sea zodiac. There was no injury among 22 Midas crew members.
Crew members abandoned a ship, were evacuated on a lifeboat and saved by the crew of a nearby shopping ship called Cosco Hellas in the northern Pacific, about 490 kilometers southwest of the island of Adak. Adak is about 1930 kilometers west of Anchorage, the largest city of state.
The crew initiated emergency fire -fighting procedures with a built -in ship damping system, but they were unable to control flames.
“The relevant authorities have been notified and we work closely with rescuers, and the tug has been distributed to support rescue and fire -fighting operations,” said Zodiac Maritime in a statement.
“Our priority is to ensure further crew safety and protection of the maritime environment.”
The US coastal guard said that she had sent manned air to Adak and the ship to this area. The status of a fire on board the ship was unknown from Wednesday in the afternoon, but according to the coast guard he was still emanating smoke.
The rear Admiral Megan Dean, commander of the seventeenth district of the Coast Guard, said in a statement that as part of the search and rescue of the coastal answers ended, the coast guard cooperated with Zodiac Maritime in order to determine how to recover the ship and what to do with him.
“We are grateful for the selfless activities of three nearby ships that helped in response and the crew of the Cosco Hellas motor ship, which helped save 22 life,” said Dean.
The 183-meter morning Midas, car and truck carrier, was built in 2006 and sails under the Liberian flag. Cars left Yantai in China, on May 26, according to the industry tracking site of the ship marinetraffic.com. They were sent to Lazaro Cardenas, the main Pacific port in Mexico.
At the beginning of this month, the Dutch security council called for improving emergency response on shipping routes in the North Sea after a deadly fire in 2023 on freighs, which transported 3,000 cars, including almost 500 electric vehicles, from Germany to Singapore.
This fire killed one person, hurt others and burned out from control for a week, and the ship was finally towed to the port in the northern Netherlands to recover.
The accident increased the concentration on safety issues on the open sea and on containers that fall from massive freighters that have dramatically increased in recent decades. Over 80 percent of international trade according to volume now arrives by sea, and the largest container vessels are longer than three football fields.