Japanese ship leasing company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, owner of the car carrier Fremantle Highway that caught fire off the Dutch coast last week, said on Friday it will investigate the cause of the incident in cooperation with relevant parties.
The blaze broke out on July 26 as the Panama-registered ship was travelling from Germany to Egypt with more than 3,000 vehicles on board, killing one crew member and injuring seven others who jumped overboard to escape the flames.
Local officials said the carrier arrived at the northern Dutch port of Eemshaven for salvage on Thursday.
An investigation has been launched by the Panama Maritime Authority, and the Netherlands was expected to assist the inquiry, a Dutch Safety Board spokesman said.
Shoei said in a statement that all 22 people who were hospitalised due to the incident, including the captain, had been discharged from the hospital by Thursday.
Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, or "K" Line, the Japanese shipping company that had chartered the Fremantle Highway, also said on Friday that the vessel's owner would investigate the extent of damage and cause of the accident in cooperation with the authorities.
"K" Line previously said there were 3,783 vehicles on board the ship, including 498 battery electric vehicles.
An emergency responder was heard in a recording released by Dutch broadcaster RTL as saying "the fire started in the battery of an electric car." Authorities have not confirmed whether that is the case, however.
© Thomson Reuters 2023.
17 Comments
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sakurasuki
Will we see another Japan execs bowing on the front of public and media?
Asiaman7
Shipping EVs has become a growing problem.
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One hazard in lithium-ion batteries is "thermal runaway," a rapid and unstoppable increase in temperature that leads to fires in EVs that are hard to extinguish and can spontaneously reignite.
Fire extinguishing systems on the massive ships that haul cars weren't designed for those hotter fires, and shipping companies and regulators are scrambling to catch up, said Douglas Dillon, executive director of the Tri-state Maritime Safety Association that covers Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Exacerbating the risks is the business model used by the companies that includes tightly packed ships. Auto carriers like the burning ship are known as RoRos, which stands for roll-on/roll-off - the way cars are loaded and unloaded.
RoRos are like floating parking garages and can have a dozen or more decks carrying thousands of vehicles, industry officials said. Unlike parking lots, however, cars are parked bumper-to-bumper with as little as a foot or two of space overhead.
Firemen typically put out EV battery fires on roadsides by clearing the area around the burning vehicle and flooding the underside with water, something difficult to do on a RoRo, Dillon said.
"There's no way for a firefighter in protective gear to get to the location of a fire" on a ship, he said, adding the cramped conditions increase the danger getting trapped.
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— From “Focus: Ocean shippers playing catch up to electric vehicle fire risk,” https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ocean-shippers-playing-catch-up-electric-vehicle-fire-risk-2023-07-27/
wallace
EVs are causing fires.
TaiwanIsNotChina
But they are not causing carbon emissions assuming the grid is clean enough, which is what is most important.
wallace
The crew on this ship said the fire started with several EVs. There have many been problems with EV-type vehicles, e-scooters exploding when charging, and burning down homes. Teslas have also had fires.
If this car transporter sinks that will cause environmental damage.
A review of safety standards is needed.
Desert Tortoise
The ship is safely in port in Eemshaven. The fire is out and temperatures are falling inside her. Salvage crews have inspected the ship and apparently much of the cargo of new cars are undamaged. It is being estimated it will take two weeks to unload them.
This is the third or fourth major auto carrier fire traceable to EVs. It is a problem the maritime industry is struggling to come up with standards and procedures with which to minimize risk. Li batteries are responsible for shipboard fires in other cargos as well and have become a major risk for container shipping lines. It is a bigger problem than just auto haulers.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ocean-shippers-playing-catch-up-electric-vehicle-fire-risk-2023-07-27/
Desert Tortoise
Why would they? If they are smart they will sue the living daylights out of whomever owned the car or cars that started the fire.
WA4TKG
You mean before now, they weren’t GOING to ?
Eastmann
EV.torch.
Peter Neil
TaiwanIsNotChinaAug. 5 07:22 am JST
Except for those pesky emissions from 500,000 lbs of mining for one battery, shipping it to China, manufacturing it using coal and oil, shipping it again for assembly in plants using coal, gas and oil, shipping the finished car on trucks using diesel, etc.
TaiwanIsNotChina
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7cfc
IOWs, unless that electric vehicle pretty much goes into a compactor without being driven, it is a net reduction in carbon emissions.
Desert Tortoise
For the North American market the mining and processing of battery materials is going to happen in North America. The supply chain and necessary factories are being built now. Toyota and others are building battery plants in the US. The US and Canada have an abundant supply of the necessary minerals.
wallace
EV's will have to be shipped without the batteries.
Desert Tortoise
Just one example of the North American battery supply chain:
https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/mountain-pass-rare-earth-mine-modernisation-project-california/
https://mpmaterials.com/what-we-do/
Alongfortheride
I am in the auto export business and I have a theory on this. I am not blaming anyone but I do wonder because these cars do not have an engine noise the port staff who load these ships are always doing so with as much speed as possible to avoid long delays for the ships if when they drive onboard they are putting the park brake on and forgetting to power down the actual car. This would leave an ongoing load on the batteries not the same but similar to when you have a gasoline car and you sit at the traffic lights with the car in drive and foot on the brake. Again not trying to put blame as it would be a very easy thing to do when your in a hurry. Or I may also be completely wrong.
Sven Asai
It’s a prove fir that those cars are by far not carbon neutral. They burn down everything, not only fossils. And that’s even more dangerous and poisonous.
Sh1mon M4sada
BMW had previously shipped hundreds of thousands of i3s and i8s (using Samsung NCM chemistry batteries) without incidents, and Tesla has shipped millions (using cylindrical cell batteries) without incidents. The only EV fire on ships has been new German EVs fitted with Chinese blade battery with LFP chemistry.
The main stream mafia, cough media, has been towing their masters' narrative that LFP chemistry is safer but the evidence doesn't lie, a large wet pouch is more prone to fire than a structural cylindrical cell wrapped in foam and encased in a structural casing.
But Tesla doesn't advertise, whereas the German brands do, so do GM and Ford, so blade LFP is safer according to the main stream mafia.