MSC FLAMINIA

Joint press release by the general state attorneyship Hamburg and police inspection Stade:

 „POL-STD: MSC FLAMINIA – state attorney and police investigate onboard – joint press release by the general state attorney Hamburg and police inspection Stade

Stade (ots) – Last Wednesday (09/19/12) at Jade-Weser-Port the state attorneyship of Hamburg conducted investigations onboard the damaged containership MSC FLAMINIA. “The responsible state attorney was onboard the heavily damaged vessel and gained first hand impressions on site”, senior state attorney Wilhelm Möllers said.
Together with the officials of the water police Stade, which carries out the investigations, representatives of BSU (Federal Bureau of Maritime Casualty Investigation) and the German Central Command for Maritime Emergencies future procedures were discussed. The case is filed under the tags “death investigation”, “missing person” and “fire investigation”.

During the fire and the subsequent firefighting onboard the 46-year old Polish First Officer and three Filipino seafarers were heavily injured. Another seafarer is missing since. After the initial firefighting measures the First Officer had died of life threatening injuries onboard a rescue vessel. An autopsy was performed in the UK. Afterwards the body was transferred to his home country where the funeral has already been conducted. A 41-year old seafarer remains in a Portuguese specialty hospital with major burn injuries. The other two seafarers (aged 30 and 41) were released from medical care after some days and have since returned to their home countries.

According to the latest information there is no hope of finding the missing 51-year old Filipino seafarer alive. It is also unlikely to find his body. The area where the missing seafarer was last seen by witnesses shows devastating fire damages to the ship and the containers in the vicinity. Nevertheless, a voluntary saliva sample was taken from the daughter of the missing seafarer, who was present at Jade-Weser-Port on September 19. If parts of the body are found during the salvage of the vessel and the unloading and disposal of her cargo, an identification of the missing person via DNA analysis will be possible. Additionally, the data of the onboard computer systems of MSC FLAMINIA was secured.

Currently, no information regarding the cause of the fire can be made. The investigations continue.”

BERE Island man Sean Harrington has been involved in the recovery of a number of shipping containers which have been spotted off the south-west coast. They are believed to contain hazardous chemicals.

The containers are from a German-registered cargo ship the MSC Flaminia. The 85,823-tonne vessel was laden with a cargo of 2,876 containers, 149 of which were classed as dangerous goods and were believed to contain dangerous chemicals.

On July 14th, while the vessel was in the mid-Atlantic, a fire broke out in one of the ship’s holds, which resulted in an explosion. One crew member died in the incident and another is still missing. The remaining 23 crew abandoned ship and were later picked up from a lifeboat by a passing oil tanker. Fire-fighting tugboats went to the scene and brought the blaze under control.

A number of the containers were spotted off the Irish coast in the past week, and following concerns that they could prove a hazard to international shipping, Sean Harrington, who operates Atlantic Towage and Marine Ltd, was tasked by the ship’s insurers to retrieve them with his ocean-going tug Ocean Bank.

Sean commented: ‘The containers are 80 miles off the south-west coast, we’ve brought three in already which were empty, and we will be heading back out for more.’ On locating the containers the Ocean Bank secured a tow line onto three of them and towed them into Castletownbere, where they were lifted from the water at Dinish Island.

The Flaminia had been on its way from South Carolina in the USA to the German port of Bremerhaven when the fire broke out. Following the incident, which took place some 1,600 kilometres from the nearest point of land, experts carried out a detailed survey of the ship before declaring it safe to be towed through the English Channel to the German port of Wilhelmshaven, where the full extent of the damage could be assessed.

Sean Harrington purchased the 33m tug Ocean Bank in 2009 and as well as undertaking towage contracts around the Irish and UK coasts, he is also contracted to the crude oil storage facility at Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay, where he assists in the manoeuvring of 300,000-tonne oil tankers.