The fire involving 150 containers on board the Charlotte Maersk has finally been extinguished, 11 days after the boxes caught alight. Maersk Line said the blaze, which started on 7 July at around 9pm local time, close to Port Klang, Malaysia, was finally extinguished on Sunday.
The 8,200teu vessel is now berthed at Tanjung Palepas, Malaysia, and containers are being unloaded. The ship sails on Maersk Line’s AE11 (MEX2) service between Asia and Europe, and had left Port Klang and was heading to Salalah, Oman, when the drama began. “Staff from the terminal as well as special handling teams are now working to unload the cargo,” Maersk Line said. “Containers unaffected by the fire are proceeding to our customers as quickly as possible.” The line said that discharge of containers caught up in the fire was planned to begin today and be completed later this week.
The carrier told IFW’s sister publication, CI-Express, that general average had been declared. Once all cargo has been unloaded, Charlotte Maersk will undergo repairs – initial investigation indicated some damage to some hatch covers, lashing bridges and cabling – before re-entering service in August. “The efforts of the crew, fire-fighting personel, port authority and terminal staff are all to be commended in safely bringing this unfortunate incident to an end,” Maersk added. At the height of the blaze, 150 containers were burning at temperatures approaching 1,000 degrees Celcius, which had made it almost impossible for firefighters to get close enough to put the fire out. There are no reported injuries to the 21 crew members. Unconfirmed reports suggest the fire started when a container exploded.
Source: Damian Brett, IFW News, 20 July 2010