After a 66-kilometer journey, the two tugs with the cargo ship arrived at their temporary location at around 11:30 a.m., Rijkswaterstaat said. The current helped to move faster than calculated. The smoke development on the cargo ship was also “minimal”.
Salvage experts should now go on board as soon as possible and check the condition of the ship. As a precaution, it remains attached to the tractors. A special ship for collecting oil also remains nearby.
The freighter, which was loaded with almost 3,800 new cars, was last located around 18 kilometers north of the Dutch island of Terschelling. According to the authorities and environmental experts, the new berth now protects the “Fremantle Highway” better from waves, wind and currents, and it is no longer in busy waters.
The cargo ship flying the Panamanian flag was on its way from Bremerhaven to Egypt and Singapore when a fire broke out on board on Wednesday night. One crew member was killed, 22 people were rescued from the ship – some crew members jumped overboard. According to the Dutch media, all of the injured have now been able to leave the hospital.
The cause of the fire is still speculated. One of the nearly 500 electric cars on board may have caught fire. Their batteries are difficult to extinguish.
In order not to capsize the 18,500-ton freighter due to the large amounts of fire-fighting water, the fire-fighting work was temporarily stopped on Thursday. It therefore took some time for the intensity of the fire and the smoke to subside.
In order to avert all dangers of an environmental catastrophe, the freighter is later to be towed into a port. According to the Rijkswaterstaat, which it will be depends on the “situation on board the cargo ship, the expected weather conditions and the availability of a port with the right facilities”.
According to the Dutch authorities, the “Fremantle Highway” is still intact below the waterline. If the freighter breaks up or sinks at its new anchorage, it could still cause an oil spill, warned marine protection expert Kim Detloff from the German Nature Conservation Union (Nabu) on Monday on Bayerischer Rundfunk.
“We would have this chronic oil pollution, over many square kilometers. And with the prevailing wind situation, that would be pushed into the German Bight, into the Wadden Sea,” said Detloff. According to the Federal Environment Ministry in Berlin, there are 1,600 tons of heavy fuel oil and a further 200 tons of marine diesel on board the “Fremantle Highway”.
The Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (Bund) declared that “a dangerous chemical cocktail with the extinguishing and cooling water is already becoming a threat to the North Sea, the Wadden Sea and the plants and animals living in it”. It contains, for example, “extremely durable and toxic perfluorinated surfactants (PFT) from extinguishing agent additives, highly toxic combustion residues from various plastics and heavy metals”.
As a consequence of the day-long drama, the head of the federal marine protection office, Nadja Ziebarth, called for future car transport at sea to be “declared as dangerous goods transport and no longer allowed to drive close to the coast”.
In addition, it must now be checked quickly whether modern extinguishing systems are required on all car freighters. Batteries in electric cars are “another source of danger for freighters”. This should be responded to in order to make the ships safer for the environment and crew.
