According to reporting by NOS, there were 23 crew members on board the ship at the time the fire broke out. The Dutch Coast Guard (Kustwacht) reports that there are no crew members on board at this point.
One crew member is known to have died. The Leeuwarder Courant reports that at least 16 other crew members are reported injured.
Many of the injured crew are reportedly suffering from breathing problems, and are being treated as hospitals in the Northern Netherlands. Multiple crew members reportedly jumped into the sea to escape the fire, and were rescued.
A spokesperson for the Dutch Coast Guard told NOS that they suspect the fire started due to one of the 25 electric cars on board. The fire was first reported around midnight on Tuesday.
Members of the KNRM (Koninklijke Nederlandse Redding Maatschappij; Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Institution) dispatched rescue ships from the islands of Ameland and Schiermonnikoog to rescue the crew, and rescue helicopters also helped to retrieve the crew from the ship. The rescues took place between 4 and 6 in the morning on Wednesday.
The Coast Guard also reports that the ship is drifting and the fire has not yet been put out. The 200 meter long ship is also reportedly listing to one side. The North Sea Foundation, an organization that advocates for keeping the North Sea clean, told the Leeuwarder Courant that the ship sinking with so many vehicles on board would be “an ecological disaster for the North Sea and the Wadden Sea.”
The ship was en route from the harbour in Bremen to Port Said in Egypt. The German Central Command for Maritime Emergencies has offered to provide ships to help in the salvage efforts for the ship. The Leeuwarder Courant reports that the ship is 200-meters long and had 2,857 cars on board, and sails under the flag of Panama.
There have been several high-profile incidents involving cargo ships in the shipping channel north of the Frisian islands encountering difficulties in recent years. In 2019, the MSC Zoe lost thousands of containers in the sea due to stormy weather, with the content of the containers washing ashore for months afterward. In 2021, another cargo ship, the Baltic Tern, had five containers fall overboard.
