A ship shipping around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis, and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, has caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The 22 crew members are on board. They are all evacuated from the ship.
Firefighters are struggling to put out a fire that broke out on Wednesday on a vessel carrying thousands of luxury cars, which is adrift off the coast of Portugal’s Azores islands, a port official said, adding it was unclear when they would succeed.
The Felicity Ace ship carried around 4,000 high end cars. Including Porsches, Audis, and Bentleys, Bmw, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday
“The intervention (to put out the blaze) has to be done very slowly,” João Mendes Cabeças, captain of the nearest port on the Azorean island of Faial, told Reuters late on Saturday. “It will take a while.”
Lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles on board are “keeping the fire alive”, Cabeças said, adding that specialist equipment to extinguish it was on the way. It was not clear whether the batteries or other reason sparked the fire.
Volkswagen, did not confirm the total number of cars on board and said on Friday it was awaiting further information.
Cabeças previously said that “everything was on fire about five meters above the waterline” and the blaze was still far from the ship’s fuel tanks. It is getting closer to the tank, he said.
“The fire spread further down,” he said, explaining that teams could only tackle the fire from outside by cooling down the ship’s structure, as it was too dangerous to go onboard.
They also cannot use water because adding weight to the ship could make it more unstable, and traditional water extinguishers do not stop lithium-ion batteries from burning, Cabeças said.
The ship was Panama flagged will be towed to a country in Europe or to the Bahamas but it is unclear when that will happen.
The Panama flagged ship, owned by Snowscape Car Carriers SA and managed by Mitsui O S K Lines Ltd, was travelling from Emden, Germany to Davisville, Davisville is a port about 70 nautical miles south of Boston.
The 22 crew members on board were evacuated on Wednesday, Portugal's navy said when the fire broke out, with no one hurt.
Around 1,100 Porsches and 190 Bentleys were on board, spokes people for the car brands said. Audi and Volkswagen brand, confirmed some of its vehicles were also on the ship but, did not state how many.
An internal email from volkswagon operations revealed there were 3,965 Volkswagen Group vehicles aboard the ship.
More than 200 of those cars were headed for the Port of Houston in Texas, with GTI, Golf R, and ID 4 models deemed to be at risk, according to the email. The auto industry is already struggling with supply issues, including global pandemic related staffing woes and the global chip shortage.
YouTuber Matt Farah, whose automotive review channel "The Smoking Tire" has a million followers, said on Twitter he was contacted by a car dealer who said the Porsche he ordered was aboard the ship.
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