The Felicity Ace ship, carrying about 4,000 vehicles including Porsche, Audis and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on February 16, 2022. And firefighters are still struggling to put out the fire.
A port official said firefighters were battling a blaze carrying thousands of luxury cars off the coast of Portugal’s Azores islands. The Felicity Ace ship, carrying nearly 4,000 vehicles, including Porsche, Audis and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday. The 22 crew members on board were evacuated on the same day.
“The intervention (to put out the fire) has to be done very slowly,” captain Joo Mendes Cabecas, the nearest port in the Azorean island of Fayal, told Reuters late Saturday. “it will take a while.”
Cabecas said the lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles on board are “keeping the fire alive,” adding specialist equipment to extinguish it was on the way.
It was not clear whether the fire was caused by the battery.
Lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles on board are “keeping the fire alive”, said Joo Mendes Cabecas, captain of the nearest port in the Azorean island of Fayal
Volkswagen, which owns the brands, did not confirm the total number of cars on board and said on Friday it was awaiting further information. Ship manager Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cabecas previously stated that “everything was burning about five meters above the water line” and that the fire was still far from the ship’s fuel tanks. It’s getting closer, he said.
“The fire spread further,” he said, explaining that teams could only deal with the fire from outside by cooling the ship’s structure because it was too dangerous to go on board.
Cabecas said they also can’t use water because adding weight to the ship could make it more unstable, and traditional water extinguishers don’t prevent lithium-ion batteries from burning.
The ship bearing the Panama flag will be moved to a country in Europe or the Bahamas, but it is not clear when that will happen.
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