At least one person has died and 16 others have been injured in a fire that broke out on the cargo ship Fremantle Highway in the North Sea, some thirty kilometers off the coast of the Netherlands, which was traveling from Germany to Egypt with about 3,000 cars on board.
As reported by the Dutch Coast Guard, the cargo ship is still on fire almost 30 kilometers off the coast of the Netherlands, although the 23 crew members on board have been evacuated. Some were brought ashore on a ship belonging to the maritime rescue services and others by helicopter. Later, they were transferred by ambulances to hospitals near the coast with respiratory problems, although none of them are in danger.
The Fremantle Highway sailed under the Panamanian flag and left the German port of Bremerhaven for Port Said, in Egypt, and had some 3,000 cars on board, of which 25 were electric cars. The Coast Guard believes the fire may have started in one of those electric vehicles and quickly spread to the rest.
The crew themselves tried to control the fire, but due to its intensity, it was not possible, which led seven of them to jump off the ship in a controlled manner until the rescue services arrived and pulled them out of the water. In addition to the official authorities, a fishing boat that was sailing in the area when the fire broke out also came to the rescue of the crew.
The fire continues out of control, especially at the front of the ship, while the Coast Guard is trying to control it from its own vessel because it is no longer safe to transfer firefighters aboard the freighter.
A tugboat managed to attach a cable to the Fremantle Highway to prevent it from drifting, thus ensuring that important shipping routes to and from Germany are not blocked as there is a strong wind current, although the Coast Guard stressed that consideration is being taken all scenarios, including that the freighter may already be sinking, as the Felicity Ace finally happened at the end of February 2022.
This freighter caught fire and ended up on the seabed, near the Azores, loaded with some four thousand cars -many luxury, belonging to Volkswagen group brands such as Porsche, Audi, Bugatti or Lamboghini-. Everything indicates that the fire also started in one of the electric cars that were on board. The difficulty of extinguishing the flames from the lithium-ion batteries that equip this type of car meant that the fire was active for several days.
Although various studies conclude that the probability of an electric car catching fire is ten times less than a gasoline one, experts warn that fire tends to be more virulent when it affects the batteries of sustainable cars. This is stated by Xavier Giménez, professor of Environmental Chemistry at the University of Barcelona (UB): “When the electrolyte, which is one of the materials that the battery contains, begins to burn, it ends up affecting all the components and the damage it causes is older”.
Also, it should be noted that this component can burn for hours and is very difficult to completely extinguish. So even when an electric fire seems to be out, it can reignite.
