Monday, February 21, 2022
By Kamal Swami
An Adrift Ship With Volkswagen Cars Catches Fire In Atlantic
According to reports, a ship carrying Volkswagen and different luxurious cars like Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi, and lithium-ion batteries caught fire on February 16, 2022, while moving from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, all the attempts adopted by the firefighters have not succeeded in controlling the expansion of the fire.
Till now, no statement is issued by the German carmaker about the number of cars present on the ship. In the words of Joao Mendes Cabecas, the captain of the port in the Azorean island of Faial, "The intervention (to put out the blaze) has to be done very slowly". Before this, he told, “everything was on fire about five meters above the waterline" and the blaze was still far from the ship's fuel tanks. There is no comment from the ship manager Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. According to Cabecas, the fire moved towards the down and therefore the teams working to stop the fire can stop it only from the outside, as going on the board can be dangerous.
As the use of water to stop the fire will put extra weight on the ship, it is difficult to stop the lithium-ion batteries from burning by using the standard water extinguishers. As told by Cabecas.
