Monday, February 21, 2022

MAYDAY, MAYDAY
Lithium-ion batteries are fueling the fire on a burning cargo ship full of Porsches

MARINHA PORTUGUESA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS
All this water and nothing to put the fire out with.

Published February 21, 2022

The cargo ship Felicity Ace is aflame from bow to stern with a lithium-ion battery fire that can’t be put out with water alone.

The fire has been burning since Wednesday (Feb. 16), as the ship drifts in the Atlantic about 200 miles southwest of Portugal’s Azores Islands. Its 22-person crew abandoned ship and was rescued on Thursday.


The ship left Germany on Feb. 10 and headed for the US with about 4,000 Porsches, Bentleys and other luxury cars aboard, and some of those were electric vehicles. It’s not clear if the batteries contributed to the fire starting in the first place—a greasy rag in a lubricant-slicked engine room or a fuel leak are the usual suspects in ship fires—but the batteries are keeping the flames going now. A forensic investigation will take months to determine the cause.

On Saturday, João Mendes Cabeças, captain of the port of Faial, the nearest Azorean island, told Reuters that the batteries in the ship’s cargo are “keeping the fire alive.” Cabeças added that reinforcements with specialist equipment to extinguish the fire were on their way. At the time of the interview, the fire hadn’t reached the ship’s fuel tank, but was closing in.

Large quantities of dry chemicals are needed to smother lithium ion battery fires, which burn hotter and release noxious gases in the process.

Pouring water onto the Felicity Ace wouldn’t put out a lithium-ion battery fire, Cabeças told Reuters, and the added water weight could make the ship more unstable.
Lithium-ion batteries pose a special fire risk

Electric vehicle fires are rare, but pose their own kind of flammability risk, and one that becomes heightened as EVs go mainstream. Large numbers of EVs grouped together, as when they are transported by cargo ship, or electric buses parked in an overnight lot, raise the risk that one flaming battery could ignite a chain reaction in adjacent batteries. According to a research proposal at the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board, “Lithium-ion battery fire risks are currently undermanaged in transit operations.”

There have been more than 35 large lithium-ion battery fires since 2018, Paul Christensen, an expert in lithium fires, told the Financial Times, including a 13-ton Tesla megapack storage battery in Victoria Australia that burned for three days. An electric ferry in Norway caught fire in 2019, and in April 2021, a battery fire at a Beijing mall killed two firefighters.

In addition, car-carrying ships and ferries can face higher risks from fires, according to insurer Allianz Global’s head of marine risk. Due to the internal areas not being divided to make it easier to transport cars, when a fire starts it can spread more easily.

Firefighters struggle to douse fire on luxury cars vessel off Azores islands


 Ship Felicity Ace burns more than 100 km from the Azores island


Sun, February 20, 2022

LISBON (Reuters) - Firefighters are struggling to put out a fire that broke out on Wednesday on a vessel carrying thousands of luxury cars, which is adrift off the coast of Portugal's Azores islands, a port official said, adding it was unclear when they would succeed.

The Felicity Ace ship, carrying around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday. The 22 crew members on board were evacuated on the same day.

"The intervention (to put out the blaze) has to be done very slowly," João Mendes Cabeças, captain of the nearest port in the Azorean island of Faial, told Reuters late on Saturday. "It will take a while."

Lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles on board are "keeping the fire alive", Cabeças said, adding that specialist equipment to extinguish it was on the way.

It was not clear whether the batteries sparked the fire.

Volkswagen, which owns the brands, did not confirm the total number of cars on board and said on Friday it was awaiting further information. Ship manager Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cabeças previously said that "everything was on fire about five meters above the water line" and the blaze was still far from the ship's fuel tanks. It is getting closer, he said.

"The fire spread further down," he said, explaining that teams could only tackle the fire from outside by cooling down the ship's structure as it was too dangerous to go on board.

They also cannot 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, Cabeças said.

The Panama-flagged ship will be towed to a country in Europe or to the Bahamas but it is unclear when that will happen.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon; Additional reporting by Victoria Waldersee in Berlin; Editing by Barbara Lewis)

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