Merchant ship fire, Gothenburg, Sweden

[Micael]

A merchant ship loaded with timber, the Liberian flagged Almirante Storni, has been on fire off the port of Gothenburg for about 18 hours now at the time of this post.

The fire is in the timber and numerous resources have been involved in the firefighting operations, which are now finally starting to bring the fire under control.

Photos by Kustbevakningen, Swedish Coast Guard:


MIRG team being transported by the Coast Guard. MIRG (Maritime Incident Response Group) are units provided by several fire departments in the Scandinavian countries, and have special training in fire and rescue operations at sea.




Firefighting from Coast Guard vessel KBV 310.



KBV 001 Poseidon and the Amirante Storni.

Several SAR helicopters from Sweden and Denmark, naval ships from Denmark and Portugal, merchant ships from several countries, tug boats from the Svitzer company and boats from the Swedish Sea Rescue Society (SSRS) have been involved over the course of the operation as well. JRCC Sweden is coordinating the operations and have offered to evacuate the 17 crew members several times but the captain refuses.

Video shot from one of the merchant vessels:

 

[Micael]

Fire is still going, over 30 hours now. Some additional photos:





Firefighters are still aboard and there appears to be two larger Coast Guard vessels, four tugboats and a SAR boat by the burning ship at the moment. An earlier attempt to do water drops from helicopters failed due to strong winds which dispersed the water and made the drops ineffective.

 

[Micael]

The fire is still going five days in. While using monitors helps contain the fire they can’t put it out entirely. Earlier today there were signs of the fire starting to spead further than before as well. In order to put it out entirely it seems like the ship will have to be brought into port, something which both the ship’s owner and some of the government agencies involved have been reluctant to do, for somewhat unclear reasons. Talks on doing so anyway intensified when news came that the fire might be spreading, since the ship has also got 600 tons of oil aboard. This would be a significant problem if the fire were to spread beyond the cargo area.

A Norwegian Coast Guard ship, KV Bergen, and an offshore vessel, Viking Loke, arrived today to take over some of the workload from the Swedish ships since they’ve started to get problems with ice buildup on the ships, due to the freezing weather and constant use of monitors.

Some more photos:

 

[Lebby]

Those are incredible pictures