On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported the following:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The crew of a cargo ship carrying 3,000 vehicles to Mexico, including 800 electric vehicles, abandoned ship after they could not control a fire aboard the vessel in waters off Alaska’s Aleutian island chain.
A large plume of smoke was initially seen at the ship’s stern coming from the deck loaded with electric vehicles Tuesday, according to U.S. Coast Guard photos and a Wednesday statement from the ship’s management company, London-based Zodiac Maritime.
There were no reported injuries among the 22 crew members of the Morning Midas.
Crew members abandoned ship, were evacuated onto a lifeboat and rescued by the crew of a nearby merchant vessel called the Cosco Hellas in the North Pacific, roughly 300 miles (490 kilometers) southwest of Adak Island. Adak is about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) west of Anchorage, the state’s largest city.
The ship has been left to burn as putting out a fire in an electric car is not an easy task. How much environmental damage will the ship do when it eventually sinks? How much environmental damage was done in the manufacturing of those electric cars? What is the comparison between the amount of carbon footprint in the manufacture of an electric car versus a car with a gasoline or diesel engine?
The article concludes:
The 600-foot (183-meter) Morning Midas, a car and truck carrier, was built in 2006 and sails under a Liberian flag.
The cars left Yantai, China, on May 26, according to the industry site marinetraffic.com. They were being shipped to Lazaro Cardenas, a major Pacific port in Mexico.
Earlier this month, a Dutch safety board called for improving emergency response on North Sea shipping routes after a deadly 2023 fire on a freighter that was carrying 3,000 automobiles, including nearly 500 electric vehicles, from Germany to Singapore.
That fire killed one person, injured others and burned out of control for a week, and the ship was eventually towed to a port in the northern Netherlands for salvage.
The accident increased the focus on safety issues on the open sea and on containers that fall off the massive freighters, which have increased in size dramatically in recent decades. More than 80% of international trade by volume now arrives by sea, and the largest container vessels are longer than three football fields.