Car transport ship fire could 'burn for days' off Netherlands

The blaze raging aboard a ship carrying 3,000 cars off the Netherlands could burn for days, officials said on Wednesday, as fears built that the fire could damage a fragile nearby island chain.

The cargo aboard the vessel includes electric vehicles and a coastguard official told Dutch media that authorities were looking into whether the fire had started with one of them.

Rescue personnel received a call early Wednesday reporting a fire on the Fremantle Highway, a Panamanian-registered ship with 3,000 vehicles on board, about 14.5 nautical miles off the northern Dutch island of Ameland.

All 23 crew members were evacuated from the ship, but one person died and several were injured, the coastguard said.

At least seven jumped overboard and were rescued from the water, while the rest were airlifted by helicopter.

"The fire could still burn for days," a coastguard official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP.

"The ship is being cooled to keep it stable," said the official. "Only the side of the ship is being sprayed, not the deck."

A coastguard official told the NOS public broadcaster that the fire was possibly sparked by an electric vehicle, one of some 25 on board.

"We are taking into account all scenarios," the official said.

The Fremantle Highway is currently close to Ameland, one of four ecologically sensitive Frisian islands, situated in the Waddensee area just north of the Dutch mainland.

 Environmental risk 
Also called the Frisian Islands, the area has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has a rich diversity of more than 10,000 aquatic and terrestrial species.

This included more than 140 species of fish of which some 20 spent their entire life in the tidal areas along the islands' famous mud flats.

The area also has a large seal and porpoise population.

Should the Fremantle Highway sink, "it would be a disaster of the highest order," the daily tabloid De Telegraaf said.

Salvage vessels were on the scene trying to put out the blaze and prevent the ship from sinking, the coastguard said.

A tug vessel has managed to attach a cable to the stricken ship to prevent it from drifting and blocking an important sailing route into Germany.

The Fremantle Highway is an 18,500-tonne car carrier ship and was sailing between Bremerhaven in Germany and Port Said in Egypt when the blaze broke out, according to the marinetraffic.com website.

 'Minimising damage' 
The injured sailors were taken to the northern towns of Lauwersoog and Eelde and left in the care of paramedics there.

The crew are from India, while the vessel's registered owner is Japanese firm Shoei Kisen Kaisha, but currently on lease to Japanese shipping firm K Line, the shipping website Equasis and Dutch media reports said.

"They all suffered from breathing problems, but none are in serious danger," a safety official of the Drenthe region told AFP.

"The sailors were also treated for burns and broken bones," she added.

"Currently several parties including salvagers and the Dutch authorities are looking at minimising the damage as much as possible," the Coast Guard said.

Some 340 containers tumbled off one of the world's largest container ships after a storm in the same area in early 2019, littering kilometres of pristine coastline with plastic and polystyrene.

The most serious incident in recent times off the busy Dutch coast happened in December 2012 when the Bahamian-flagged car carrier Baltic Ice collided with a container ship and sank.

Eleven sailors were killed in that incident.