(Photo by The Netherlands Coastguard)
Toronto, Ontario — If you have been waiting on the delivery of a new Mercedes, you may want to check along the Dutch coastline, as reports came in Wednesday that a cargo ship containing nearly 3,000 vehicles caught fire, killing a crew member in the process.
The Indian crew of the Panama-registered “Fremantle Highway” was en route from Germany to Egypt when a fire broke out on Tuesday night, forcing several crew members to have to jump overboard.
Fighting the fire proved exceedingly difficult for first responders, and as of press time it is still unclear as to whether it has been contained yet, though the Dutch coastguard pointed out to Reuters that spraying the ship with too much water could cause it to sink.
“The fire is most definitely still not controlled. It’s a very hard fire to extinguish, possibly because of the cargo the ship was transporting,” Edwin Versteeg, a spokesperson for the Dutch Department of Waterways and Public Works, said around 3 p.m. EST.
Of the 2,857 vehicles onboard the vessel, about 25 are estimated to be electric vehicles, which despite the fact that they generally pose about the same fire risk as ICE vehicles, the fires EVs create do tend to be more severe because of thermal runaway.
“Electric cars burn just as much as combustion engine cars. When batteries overheat and a so-called ‘thermal runaway’ occurs, then it gets dangerous,” said master mariner and representative of the German Insurance Association, Uwe-Peter Schieder.
“A chemical reaction in the battery produces gases which inflate the battery.”
Mercedes-Benz confirmed to Reuters that about 350 of the vehicles on the ship were from them.
