shipwreck
After 48 hours: Man rescued from burning car ferry
After two days, firefighters were able to board the burning ferry. Photo: Petros Giannakouris/AP/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
A glimmer of hope – two days after a car ferry caught fire off Corfu, emergency services have now been able to save a missing person. Other survivors cannot be ruled out.
Rescue workers have rescued one of the twelve missing passengers from the burning car ferry “Euroferry Olympia”. The Greek Minister of Shipping Giannis Plakiotakis confirmed this to the TV station Skai.
The man is said to come from Lithuania and had been in the ferry, which had been on fire since Friday, for more than 48 hours. This gave hope again that other people might have survived – seven Bulgarians, three Greeks and one Turk are missing.
Difficult rescue operation
On Sunday, firefighters managed to get on board the ferry – previously extremely high temperatures of around 600 degrees on the outside of the ship had made access impossible. The rescued had apparently stayed in the bow of the ferry.
A fire broke out on the “Euroferry Olympia” on the night of Friday for reasons unknown until now, which has not yet been completely extinguished. 280 people were rescued during Friday, twelve have since been missing. They are said to have slept in their vehicles on the garage decks, trapped by the flames and heat. The ship is north of Corfu and was secured there by tugboats. Security forces fear the weather could deteriorate and hamper firefighting and rescue efforts.
Where is the car transporter “Felicity Ace” recovered?
The fire on the freighter, which is driving around 4,000 German cars from the VW Group on the Atlantic without a driver, should be extinguished if possible before the ship is towed away. Experts from a Dutch salvage company analyzed the situation on the “Felicity Ace” car transporter several times over the weekend, the newspaper “Correio dos Açores” reported, citing a spokesman for the Portuguese Navy. The use of the most modern equipment at the scene of the accident about 170 kilometers south of the Azores, which belongs to Portugal, is being considered.
So far, the plan was to first tow the ship to a port and then extinguish the fire. The fire that broke out on Wednesday for reasons that are still unknown cannot be extinguished with water because of the risk of large-scale environmental pollution. The ship has a slight list and it is feared that toxic substances will be washed into the sea. João Mendes Cabeças, the port captain of Porto da Horta on the Azores island of Faial, explained that many of the charged cars are electric models whose batteries make deleting them a little more complicated.