Cargo ship fire doused
A FIRE aboard a cargo ship off Sri Lanka was finally extinguished yesterday after a 13-day international operation, the navy said. Tons of microplastic granules from its cargo have inundated Sri Lanka’s beaches, forcing a fishing ban and sparking fears of ecological devastation.
Experts from Dutch salvage company SMIT boarded the MV X-Press Pearl and reported massive flooding of the engine rooms.
Navy spokesperson Captain Indika de Silva said the stern of the 186m long container carrier had gone down by about a metre because of the flooding.
“It is not unusual for the vessel to trim by aft (tilt to the rear) when water sprayed on deck settles in the engine room,” said Silva.
He said the spraying of water was stopped to prevent further flooding, but some areas of the ship were still too hot to carry out a complete examination of the vessel, which caught fire on May 20. Sri Lanka’s navy was joined by India’s coastguard and tugs brought in by SMIT to battle the flames which destroyed much of the nearly 1 500 containers the vessel was carrying.
The Singapore-registered ship had 25 tons of nitric acid and other chemicals as well as 28 containers of plastic raw material, much of which fell into the sea.
The Marine Environment Protection Authority chief Dharshani Lahandapura said they were still assessing the ecological damage, but believed it was the “worst ever in my lifetime”.
The three-month-old ship was heading to Colombo from Gujarat, India. It had previously visited Qatar and Dubai and was due to go to Malaysia and Singapore after calling at Colombo.
Officials and scientists warn that the maritime disaster is far from over, with billions of plastic pellets washing up on beaches to the south. As Sri Lankan sailors scrape the debris from beaches, scientists are trying to determine how far the flotsam will travel and what the damage will be.
“It’s an environmental disaster,” Sri Lankan marine biologist Asha de Vos said. She worries currents could eventually carry the plastic pellets as far as the other side of the island nation, killing wildlife and damaging sensitive ecosystems.
The crew of the X-Press Pearl first saw smoke rising from the cargo hold on May 20 while anchored not far from the port of Colombo, according to X-Press Feeders, the company that operates the Singapore-flagged ship.
They tried to extinguish the fire by releasing carbon dioxide in the hold, but the fire grew and an explosion rocked the recently-built ship on May 22, the company said.
The 25-person crew was evacuated as the Sri Lankan navy tried to suppress the blaze, with help from the Indian Coast Guard and firefighting tugs belonging to a Dutch company.
Infrared footage of the ship taken over the weekend finally showed the fires had almost gone out.
Sri Lankan authorities suspect the fire was caused by a leak from the ship’s containers, which were carrying 25 tons of nitric acid. The chemical is used in fertilisers as well as explosives.
X-Press Feeders executive chairperson Tim Hartnoll said poor packaging was responsible for the leak, which the crew had detected while in the Arabian Sea.
According to X-Press Feederst, the ship applied to the western Indian port of Hazira and the Qatari port of Hamad to offload the leaking container, but the requests were denied. “The advice given was there were no specialist facilities or expertise immediately available to deal with the leaking acid,” the company said. “It was a case of not in my backyard syndrome,” Hartnoll said.
Sri Lankan officials said on Monday a special police team had begun investigating as the government seeks to take legal action against the vessel’s owners over the incident. The ship was also carrying 78 tons of plastic pellets, or nurdles. Some of them poured into the ocean.
Authorities have warned people not to touch the debris from the ship.