Status: 08/18/2023 6:30 p.m
Ship fire on the North Sea: The fishing cutter “Wotan” caught fire off Büsum (Dithmarschen district) in the early morning and finally sank. The two fishermen on board were able to save themselves. The emergency command now wants to prevent environmental damage.
By early Friday evening, the CCME had sucked up the sunken cutter’s diesel oil from the surface of the water. The cutter had around 2,800 liters of marine diesel in the tank, plus around 200 liters of hydraulic oil. Now the work is stopped. According to a spokesman, the absorbers, which act like sponges for pollutants, are saturated and must be replaced. A sensor aircraft will fly over the accident site tomorrow morning. If it discovers an oil film on the North Sea, work will continue. Pollutant removal is very difficult, the spokesman said, because diesel forms an extremely thin film on the water surface. On the other hand, the risk of major environmental pollution is limited because this thin film evaporates.
Sailors were surprised in their sleep
At 4:20 a.m. this morning, the cutter caught fire – the two fishermen were just about 13 kilometers west of Büsum at the time and were surprised by the flames while they were sleeping. Cutter captain Norbert Temming noticed the fire in the engine room immediately after waking up. When trying to put out the fire, the combustion gases caused him problems. The boat was mostly made of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GRP). The cause of the fire is still unclear.
There was no more intervening that you could somehow deal with the fire extinguisher or with something to close it, because the combustion gases that arise when GRP burns and then there are probably also oils with it, practically take your breath away.
Norbert Temming, captain of the “Wotan”
Rescue cruiser saves the sailors
Radio communications also stopped working properly during the fire. “I could understand the other side, but no one understood me anymore. And I couldn’t try out a lot and try another channel because the fire was just getting closer and closer,” says Temming. The men then fled to safety on a life raft. They weren’t hurt. The two sailors ended up adrift on the liferaft in the water four kilometers from the ship. There the sea rescue cruiser “Theodor Storm” took them on board.
Rescuers take care of the men
Fabian Burrmann from the German Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked Persons was one of the rescue workers on board the “Theodor Storm”: “We saw from afar that the cutter was on fire – ablaze,” reports Burrmann. The crew reportedly ignited a hand flare that could be seen briefly. She would then have found the two men two nautical miles west of the cutter. Fortunately, nothing happened to the two, says Burrmann. “They got into the boat with dry feet.”
VIDEO: Burning fishing cutter: How a sea rescuer experienced the operation (2 min)
Firefighting fails
Then they tried to fight the flames for seven hours. A team from the Cuxhaven fire brigade went on board for this, but then had to leave the cutter again. At around 10 a.m. the 18 meter long “Wotan” sank. According to the CCME, emergency services on board the rescue cruiser “Hermann Marwede” noticed that the cutter was listing. Within minutes she became unstable and capsized over the starboard side. Because of the leaking fuel, salvaging the cutter was “secondary for the time being,” said Benedikt Spangardt from the Havariekommando. Whether it is possible to salvage the ship will be checked in the next few days.
Several ships and an airplane in action
In addition to the sea rescue cruisers, the ships “Mellum” and the “Neustadt” of the Federal Police were initially deployed on Friday. The “Trische”, a ship belonging to the state of Schleswig-Holstein with equipment for combating pollution accidents on board, later joined the scene. The DO 228 sensor aircraft also monitored the site in order to be able to determine whether and where pollutants were escaping, the emergency command announced.
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