More fear than harm. A fire broke out on Monday aboard a car ferry carrying 300 people. The fire could be extinguished and caused no casualties, it tells the Swedish maritime authorities.
The “Stena Scandica” was making a connection between Latvia and Sweden in the Baltic Sea when the fire alarm was raised on board at around 10:30 a.m., according to the company and the rescue services. According to Stena Line, which operates the ferry, the fire appears to have spread from a refrigerated truck on the car deck.
“The fire has been extinguished,” Lisa Mjörning, a spokeswoman for the Swedish maritime authority, told AFP at 1:30 p.m. “In the next three or four hours, the ferry will be towed to the port,” she explains.
Three helicopters and seven boats were mobilized
The ferry was making a crossing between the Latvian port of Ventspils and Nynäshamn, near Stockholm, where it will be towed.
All 300 people on the ferry (about 240 passengers and 60 crew members) remained on board, the spokeswoman said, correcting initial information that an evacuation had begun. “There were no injuries on board and there was no evacuation,” according to the maritime authority.
The fire was described by a Stena Line spokesman as “a limited fire, concentrated around a refrigerated truck on the car deck”, with “mostly smoke”. Three helicopters and seven boats were dispatched to the scene. Another shuttle had been diverted in case of need for evacuation. The Stena Scandica is now off the island of Gotska Sandön, off the southeast coast of Sweden.
One of the worst disasters of the 20th century took place between the Baltic countries and Sweden in September 1994, when the ferry “Estonia” sank. By night, 852 people had died.
Source: BFM TV
