Fire Subsides on Cargo Ship Carrying Volkswagen EVs
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LISBON, Portugal — A fire aboard a ship carrying cars in the Mid-Atlantic is dying out, a Portuguese navy officer said Feb. 22, and the huge vessel is expected to be towed to the Bahamas.
The blaze on the Felicity Ace has burned for six days near Portugal’s Azores Islands. A Portuguese Air Force helicopter evacuated the 22 crew members last week, leaving the 650-foot-long vessel adrift.
Two ocean-going tugboats with firefighting equipment have hosed down the ship’s hull to cool it, according to the port of Horta harbormaster, Capt. Joao Mendes Cabecas, on the Azores island of Faial,
Two more tugboats were expected to arrive by the end of the week, he told the Associated Press.
The cause of the fire is not known, Mendes Cabecas said, though suspicion has fallen on lithium batteries in electric vehicles the Felicity Ace was taking from Germany to the United States.
“We know from what the captain told us that there were a lot of electric vehicles on board, as well as nonelectric vehicles,” he said.
The fire broke out on a cargo deck where the vehicles were stowed, according to Mendes Cabecas, but when the alarm went off there already was too much smoke to make out where the blaze had started.
Flames no longer were visible from outside Feb. 22 and the ship is stable, he said. A salvage crew hopes to get aboard the ship Feb. 23 and hook up a tow line.
Volkswagen Group has said the ship was transporting vehicles that the German automaker produced but has provided no more details.
Mendes Cabecas said Portuguese authorities did not have access to the ship’s manifest so he couldn’t say how many vehicles were on board or what make they were.
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The Felicity Ace can carry more than 18,700 tons of cargo. Typically, car transport ships fit thousands of vehicles on multiple decks in their hold.
Mendes Cabecas said there currently was no threat of pollution. Hoses are not being aimed inside the vessel, to avoid runoff from lithium batteries going into the sea.
The ship is carrying 2,200 tons of fuel and 2,200 tons of oil.
The weather in the area, 220 miles south of the Azores, is fair, with a swell of less than 6½ feet.
