One crew member died and seven were injured when a fire broke out on a cargo ship off the coast of the Netherlands, writes Reuters.
The Panama-registered Fremantle Highway carried 2,857 cars from Germany to Egypt, of which 25 were electric cars. The representative of the Dutch Coast Guard informed that the possible source of the fire is exactly one of the electric cars. The ship is still burning.
The Dutch broadcasting organization NOS reported that
the 199-meter-long cargo ship was successfully towed away from the shipping lanes.
The ship was 27 kilometers north of the Dutch island of Ameland when a fire broke out on the 25th of July. There were 23 persons on board. The injured crew members were taken to hospitals. They suffered from smoke inhalation or were injured during the evacuation.
This is not the first case of a cargo ship catching fire in July. In early July, two New Jersey firefighters were killed and five injured while battling flames on a ship carrying hundreds of cars. In February, a fire destroyed thousands of luxury cars near the Azores.