Luxury cars will never arrive safely. Because since Wednesday, the Felicity Ace is still in flames and drifts in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, off the Azores, according to the Portuguese press agency Lusa. This 200 m freighter was carrying around 4,000 luxury cars, including 1,100 Porsches and 189 Bentleys, specifies the American daily The New York Times.
On Thursday, the Portuguese authorities rescued the 22 crew members of the Panamanian-flagged merchant vessel by helicopter. None of them were injured. “The ship is burning from end to end… Everything is on fire about five meters above the waterline,” Captain Joao Cabecas said.
And the fire continues to reduce high-end cars to smoke, supposed to travel from Germany to the United States. Lithium batteries from electric vehicles carried by the boat are likely to be the cause of the incident, according to the press agency Archyde.com.
Tugs on the way
The Voyage of the Felicity Ace has begun on February 10, departing from the port of Emden, in northwestern Germany, where Volkswagen has a factory. Direction Davisville, in the state of Rhode Island, on the east coast of the United States. The arrival was then scheduled for February 23, according to the real-time ship tracking site Vessel Finder.
On Thursday, the situation was “stable”. A ship of the portuguese navy was dispatched to the scene to follow the evolution of the fire. The disaster would not have caused, for the moment, any episode of pollution, affirm the navy and the authorities on Friday.
Tugs are on the way, but according to the captain, the ship cannot be towed to the Azores because it is so large that it would block trade at the port. Three of them, from Gibraltar and the Netherlands, are expected to arrive on Wednesday. A rescue team was also dispatched to try to control the flames.