Fire on scrap metal ship in Amsterdam won't be extinguished today: fire brigade
The fire on the scrap metal ship in Amsterdam’s Westelijk Havengebied is still burning and won’t be extinguished any time soon. With the plan the fire brigade is currently following, they don’t expect their job to be done before 8:00 a.m. on Saturday at the earliest, Parool reported.
Firefighters have completely extinguished the blaze in hold 4 of the ship, where the fire started. The fire is still raging in hold 3, which it spread to. The heat of the fire damaged the hydraulic door to the point where it won’t open properly, making it more difficult to reach the fire. It also made it impossible for the fire brigade to follow the strategy they did with hold 4, in which they removed the scrap and extinguished the burning bits on the shore.
“We cannot just spray thousands of liters of water into a ship. That affects the stability of the ship,” a spokesperson for the fire brigade told Parool. The firefighters are busy clearing the scrap out of hold 2 as a precaution. The ship has five holds.
“Scrap metal is still being removed from the ship. Firefighting operations are taking place from the water and the quay,” the Amsterdam-Amstelland Fire Department said. “The smoke is still developing, our advice remains unchanged. Stay out of the smoke.”
Locals are still urged to keep their windows and doors closed and stay out of the smoke as much as possible. But the city won’t send out any more NL Alerts. “The message has now been widely spread,” a spokesperson for the municipality told the local newspaper.
On Thursday evening and Friday morning, Amsterdam residents received one or more NL Alerts with the message to stay out of the smoke. An NL Alert applies to a specific area and has a duration of one hour. Within that hour, people in that area will receive the message, also when they enter the area. After the hour, the message stops. The municipality sent multiple alerts as the wind direction changed and smoke started affecting different areas, and to make sure that everyone got the message.
The fire started at around 5:00 p.m. on Thursday on a cargo ship at the Amsterdam Scrap Terminal recycling company on Vlothavenweg. The ship was moored and being loaded when the fire broke out. As far as is known, no one got hurt.
In several areas, the smoke of the fire has left soot behind on cars, window frames, and garden furniture, among other things. The fire brigade advised locals to wash away the soot with warm and soapy water. If you have a vegetable garden, don’t eat the crops with visible soot on them, the fire brigade said.
