Cargo ship still burning off Ameland coast; Risk of capsizing averted

The situation with the burning cargo ship north of Ameland is virtually unchanged from last night. The fire is still burning, and the Fremantle Highway is still afloat. At this stage, it is not at risk of capsizing or sinking, the Coast Guard told NOS.

“The tugboat has an emergency connection with the ship, so we can keep it in position,” Edwing Granneman of the Coast Guard told the broadcaster. The salvage company wants to send people on board to assess the situation more accurately, but that is currently impossible due to the extreme heat. “There are still fires and smoke.”

Later on Thursday, the Coast Guard will check from the air whether the temperature on board has dropped at all. According to Granneman, it could take days before the fire is extinguished. The Coast Guard’s crisis team and the recovery companies will meet today to discuss the different scenarios.

On Wednesday evening, the Wadden Association reported that no oil had yet leaked from the Fremantle Highway. Should that start happening, the oil would spread to the north and not towards the Wadden Islands based on “the current and forecast wind and wave directions for the coming days,” Minister Mark Harbers of Infrastructure wrote to parliament on Thursday. The Rijkswaterstaat is on standby with an oil recovery vessel to intervene as soon as necessary.

While the ship is currently stable, the risk of capsizing and sinking is still a genuine concern. It could result in part of the ship’s load of 3,000 cars ending up in the Wadden. “It is a World Heritage area, and that could be damaged if strange, toxic products were to end up there,” Ameland mayor Leo Pieter Stoel said on Wednesday.

The mayors of the Wadden Islands have long advocated for more safety measures on the shipping routes around their World Heritage Area, and Stoel again stressed the importance of these. “We have already spoken out about the concern about the route being sailed.” There is a northern and a southern sailing route around the Wadden. The mayors want the southern route closed. “The further from the Wadden islands, the less risk and the more time to intervene if something goes wrong,” Stoel said.