Alaska high seas emergency: 22 crew members rescued after fire on ship carrying 3,000 cars
Cosco Hellas rescued 22 crew members from the Morning Midas after a fire near Alaska.
Twenty two crew members on a cargo ship carrying 3,000 vehicles, 800 of them electric, from China to Mexico were rescued after a fire broke out. The vessel, Morning Midas, caught fire at a location 480 kilometers southwest of Adak Island (Alaska) and part of the Aleutian Island chain in the North Pacific.
The crew could not extinguish the fire using equipment aboard the ship. They abandoned ship and boarded a lifeboat. Cosco Hellas, a merchant vessel responding to a nearby distress call, later rescued the affected crew members. The commercial vessel is operated by Zodiac Maritime based in London, England, and departed Yantai, China, for Mexico's Los Cavones.
Deck fire: Electric vehicles on board
Zodiac Maritime confirmed the blaze first started on the deck of the car carrier loaded with electric vehicles. The blaze billowed a massive cloud of smoke from the vessel, with the fire starting at the stern of the Morning Midas, a LPG car carrier built in 2006 registered to Liberia. Apparent despite the activation of the Emergency System onboard the ship, that fire could not be extinguished.
U.S. Coast Guard and other authorities sent aerial assets and a vessel to Adak, and as of Wednesday afternoon, the vessel was still smoking. Also, Zodiac Maritime indicated that along with the rescue and salvage effort, a crewed safety boat was deployed for safety of the crew and facilitate environmental protections.
Concerns after incident - Electric vehicles linked to fires?
Rear Admiral Mega Dean, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard's Seventeenth District, congratulated Cosco Hellas' quick response with a rescue. She said the Coast Guard is now working with Zodiac Maritime to assess the condition of the vessel after the rescue and will figure out what to do next.
The incident shined new light on the safety risks in ocean transport of electric vehicles. Earlier this year, a safety board in the Netherlands called for enhanced emergency response following a deadly fire on a vessel last year with with 500 electric vehicles. The fire lasted a week and raised a serious red flag about lithium battery fires at sea.
