The ship of commerce and Italian Great America , the victim of a fire Sunday evening in the bay of Biscay, and sank at 14h26 Tuesday, at 333 km to the west of the French coast, announced to the AFP the maritime prefecture of the Atlantic. “The boat was sunk by 4600 m of the bottom,” said a spokesman of the maritime prefecture. The 27 passengers aboard this ship of 214 metres, from Hamburg (Germany) and who was going to Casablanca (Morocco), have been evacuated in the night of Sunday to Monday, safe and sound.
The vessel had reported a fire on board while it was approximately 263 kilometres south-west of the pointe de penmarc’h (south Finistère). After having announced in a prime-time having controlled the fire and want to go on the road to La Coruña (Spain), the captain of the ship informed the maritime authorities of the degradation of the situation so that more containers were on fire. It was decided a little after 2am to abandon ship.
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on Monday and Tuesday, operations to extinguish the fire proved unsuccessful, mainly because of the bad weather conditions. Frigates multi-missions (FREMM) of the Navy, “Aquitaine” was Tuesday in the area, even as the BSAA (the Building of the support and assistance of the charter), the “VN Sapper”, where he noted the tug of the high seas “Abeille Bourbon”, who had attempted, without success, to put an end to the fire. Two tugs, chartered by the company Ardent, mandated by the owner of the vessel, the Grimaldi Group, were to arrive Tuesday and Wednesday night on area. On Twitter, the maritime prefecture said Tuesday afternoon that the ship “suffered a fire since march 10, in the evening, the violence has intensified over the last 24 hours. The ship was on its right side an inclined surface that has worsened over time”.
“The ship, built in 1997, was selected in 2010 to 35 technical deficiencies in the port of Tilbury in the United Kingdom”, has assured Monday in a press release the environmentalist association Robin des Bois, adding that since “other deficiencies are regularly identified by marine safety inspectors in Hamburg and Antwerp”. The association ensures that “logically” the vessel is “packed full of cars and other wheeled vehicles second-hand, trailers and construction equipment”, as well as waste, “recycle”, tires and a few containers containing hazardous materials.
The risk of pollution to assess
After this shipwreck, it is necessary to “consider the means of pollution control,” said the French minister of the ecological Transition François de Rugy before the national Assembly. “Because, as always in these cases, there is a risk of pollution, it is not necessary to deny it, because first of all there is a cargo of heavy fuel oil was the fuel of propulsion”, a-t-he stressed. Still also, according to the minister, to identify the contents of the cargo “to know the exact nature of the products contained in the containers, some of which are thrown into the water, even before the ship sank”. “We’ll see if it is necessary to mobilize means of sub-marine pollution control,” said François de Rugy.
Sinking of the Great America: “We will consider the ways anti-pollution” announcement of Rugy – Watching on Figaro Live
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