The favourable weather conditions enable those conducting pollution cleaning operations off the coast of France, where the ill-fated Grande America sank a week ago. In the meantime, the Atlantic Maritime Prefecture published an inventory of the ship’s cargo according to which, Grande America was transporting 1.050 tonnes of dangerous goods.
Six petrochemical storage tanks caught fire at the International Terminal Co. storage farm at Houston’s sprawling Deer Park refining complex, on March 17. The fire spread quickly, and managed to affect a total of seven filled. These tanks include gasoline, xylene, naphtha and lubricant base oil. All employees are accounted for, and no injuries have been reported.
Costa Smeralda, the first LNG-fueled cruise ship of the Costa Cruises fleet, suffered a minor fire on the deck 15, while undergoing the final stage of construction at the Finnish shipyard Meyer Turku, Monday afternoon. There was stored equipment on fire, started by welding inside the ship.
A fire broke out aboard the mine countermeasures ship ‘USS Devastator’, while the ship was pierside at Naval Support Activity Bahrain at approximately 8 p.m. local, March 14, according to data provided by the US navy.
IMO’s Sub-Committee conducted a meeting on Ship Systems and Equipment (SSE 6), on 4-8 March 2019. The meeting except safe lifting operations, focused on fire safety on ro-ro vessels in order to minimize the danger and the accidents.
After the initial confirmation of oil spill coming from Grande America’s sinking, French authorities have sighted another oil slick originating from the sunken RoRo in the Bay of Biscay. The French Navy and Spain’s maritime search and rescue agency revealed that there is a third oil spill in the area of the incident, covering an area of about 5 km2.
The Italian con/ro ‘Grande America’ that caught fire, finally sank, on March 12, in the Bay of Biscay at a position about 180 nm off the coast of France. The vessel that was on fire forced all its crew members to abandon it and seek for help.
The Swedish Club published its monthly safety scenario for March. In this month’s scenario, the Swedish Club describes an engine room fire that burst while the vessel was sailing. The master and the crewmembers finally put the fire out. Yet, later on it was found that only seven of thirteen CO2 bottles were released into the engine room.
The Italian con/ro ‘Grande America’ caught fire, approximately 140 nm off Finistère, forcing all 27 members of her crew to abandon ship, on March 10. After being informed by the captain that the vessel was on fire, the Royal Navy diverted to the scene to provide assistance. Although no one from the crew was injured, some required hospital treatment.
IMCA informs of an incident where an unmanned ROV control room container, located on the deck of accommodation jack-up, caught fire. No injuries were reported, but the ROV control room, along with the suitcase ROV, sustained serious damages.
