Firefighters have been struggling to extinguish flames on a massive cargo ship that caught fire last week while adrift off the coast of Portugal’s Azorean islands, a port official said.
João Mendes Cabeças, the captain of a port in the island region, said lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles on board the vessel are possibly “keeping the fire alive” and it might take some more time to douse the flames, also noting that the blaze had greatly lost its intensity.
“The fire has subsided in recent hours,” Cabeças told Lusa news agency, explaining that he believes it’s due to the fact that there’s little left to burn.
The 656-foot Panamanian-flagged vessel, Felicity Ace, was on its way from Germany to the United States when it caught fire while adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 16, about 90 nautical miles southwest of the Azores islands.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the batteries of the electric vehicles sparked the fire.
The 22 crew members on board were evacuated the same day the fire broke out and none of them were harmed. There are some 3,900 vehicles on the cargo ship, including Porsches, Audis, Volkswagens, and Bentleys.
“We are working with the shipping company to find out further information,” said a spokesman.
Cabeças said crews were only able to tackle the flames from the outside by cooling down the ship’s structure as it was too dangerous to go on board, adding that the fire was also spreading closer to the ship’s fuel tanks.
Firefighters also could not use water because adding weight to the ship could make it more unstable, and traditional water extinguishers do not stop lithium-ion batteries from burning, he added.
