A major effort to evacuate the ferry was started on Monday evening, when the power on the boat was knocked out by a fire. Now the evacuation has been put on hold because the vessel is again running on its own engines. This was reported by SVT on Monday evening. – They are driving their own machine towards Nynäshamn, together with the entourage in the form of the coast guard, a tugboat and the Swedish Maritime Administration, says Sandra Gillén at the Swedish Maritime Administration to SVT. Before midnight, the Swedish Maritime Administration issued a press release stating that the vessel was moving at a leisurely pace towards the harbor in Nynäshamn and that it was expected to arrive on Tuesday morning. There were 299 people on board the Stena ferry when the fire started earlier on Monday. 241 were passengers. They first planned to evacuate all the passengers by helicopter, but that was cancelled. Hear the distress call from the ferry. Fire on car deck It was at 12.40 that there was a report of a fire on the car deck on the ferry MS Stena Scandica outside Gotska Sandön in the Baltic Sea, reported Aftonbladet. The fire was extinguished around two hours later, confirmed press spokesperson for the Swedish Maritime Administration Lisa Mjörning to Dagbladet. They have not been informed of any personal injuries, she tells the newspaper. – We have notified boats and helicopters, and cooperate with the Maritime Rescue Company, the Coast Guard and merchant shipping if it is the case that we have to evacuate. As it looks now, we don’t need it, Mjörning told SVT before the fire was extinguished. The position of the ship Stena Scandica with 300 passengers. It started in a cold storage container Press spokesman for the Maritime Administration Jonas Frantzen tells TT that the fire started in a cooling container on the car deck. Frantzen tells the news agency that a few people have left the ferry. The rescue leader must decide whether a full-scale evacuation is necessary, Frantzen told TT. The Norwegian Maritime Authority said they had the fire under control at around 1.30pm. – The passengers on board have been taken care of and there is a limited spread of the fire. I can’t specify it more in advance because we are still building a picture of the situation, says a spokesperson for Stena Line, which operates the ferry, Stefan Elfström to SVT. The fire occurred close to the Salvorev nature reserve, which is an important nesting area for seabirds and a spawning area for fish. Unknown extent of damage The extent of damage to the ferry is currently unknown. – There is smoke, but no open flames, Mjörning told Aftonbladet when the fire had come under control. Several rescue services are involved in the action. VG has been in contact with Giedrius Didoras, who lives in Brønnøysund. As of 1.36 p.m., Didoras says that he and the rest of the passengers are on the top deck. – They told us that there was a fire on a car tyre. The ferry has stopped, and I am waiting for information on what to do. We can’t see any of the flames, but we can see smoke from both sides of the ferry, Didoras told VG. The ferry Stena Scandica runs between Nynäshamn in Sweden and Ventspils in Latvia. The ferry has a capacity of 970 passengers.
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Ferry heads for port under own engine after fire – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
