Lisbon: It was on Wednesday that a massive cargo ship carrying 4,000 luxury cars caught fire off the coast of Azores Island in Portugal. And it’s still burning in the middle of the Atlantic Sea.
Firefighters have been struggling to douse the fire in the ship called Felicity Ace, Reuters reported. The fate of luxury vehicles by carmakers like Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen and Bentley is still not known. The ship is also learnt to be carrying some electric cars with lithium-ion batteries.
According Joao Mendes Cabeças, captain of the nearest port, the process of dousing the fire on the ship has to be executed very slowly and will take a while.
The lithium-ion batteries of electric vehicles on the deck of the ship are keeping the fire alive, Cabecas said.
He also mentioned that specialist equipment to extinguish the fire is on the way. He previously said that everything was on fire about five meters above the water line and the blaze was still far from the ship’s fuel tanks, but it is getting closer. “The fire spread further down,” he mentioned.
Another reason for the delay in putting out the fire is because firefighters could only go about their work from outside, by cooling down the ship’s structure. Going on board the ship was too dangerous.
The 22 crew members were evacuated on Wednesday itself.
