JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A salvage team is anticipated to reach the site early next week where a cargo ship, carrying approximately 3,000 vehicles to Mexico, caught fire in the waters off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
A tugboat equipped with salvage experts and specialized gear is set to arrive at the site of the Morning Midas around Monday, according to a statement from London-based Zodiac Maritime, the ship’s management company, on Thursday. The team will evaluate the ship’s condition, and a separate tugboat with firefighting and ocean towing capabilities is being organized, the company stated. Meanwhile, officials are employing the ship’s satellite-linked systems to keep track of it.
The vessel was still afloat as of Thursday morning, with images from the U.S. Coast Guard revealing it was “alight with smoke emanating” from it, according to the statement.
The Coast Guard has said it received a distress alert around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday about a fire aboard the Morning Midas, which was roughly 300 miles (490 kilometers) southwest of Adak Island. The ship was carrying about 70 fully electric and about 680 hybrid vehicles, the Coast Guard said, noting that the information was preliminary.
Adak is about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) west of Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city.
All 22 Morning Midas crew members were uninjured. They were evacuated onto a lifeboat and a nearby merchant vessel rescued them. They remained onboard the rescue vessel Thursday, according to Zodiac Maritime.
The 600-foot (183-meter) Morning Midas was built in 2006 and sails under a Liberian flag. The car and truck carrier left Yantai, China, on May 26, according to the industry site marinetraffic.com. It was headed to a major Pacific port in Mexico.
A Dutch safety board in a recent report called for improving emergency response on North Sea shipping routes after a deadly 2023 fire aboard a freighter that was carrying 3,000 automobiles, including nearly 500 electric vehicles, from Germany to Singapore.
One person was killed and others injured in the fire, which burned out of control for a week. That ship was eventually towed to a Netherlands port for salvage.
