Four injured crew members on a Marshall Islands-registered cargo ship that caught fire off Pingtung County on Saturday evening have been airlifted to safety, while the other 17 crew members were still on board as of early yesterday afternoon, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said.
CGA official Huang Liang-wei (黃亮圍) yesterday said that preparations were being made to tow the disabled ship into the Port of Kaohsiung by noon today with the 17 crew members on board.
On Saturday, the four airlifted crew members sustained burns after a fire broke out in the engine room of the cargo ship Panoria, causing it to lose power.
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration.
The fire was extinguished by the crew, but one crew member had serious burns and three others had minor burns, and all needed to be treated urgently, the coast guard said, which first received reports of the incident at 5pm on Saturday.
Despite bad weather and choppy seas, the injured crew members were airlifted from the ship at about 7pm on Saturday and taken to the Kaohsiung International Airport before being rushed to a local hospital for treatment.
The difficult sea conditions made it impossible to rescue the other crew workers, Huang said, adding that at about 8am yesterday the tugboat Salvage Rigger sailing under the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines headed to the scene escorted by coast guard vessels.
The cargo ship was expected to arrive in the Port of Kaohsiung before noon today, Huang said.
The coast guard said in a statement on Saturday that it received a report at about 5pm that day that the cargo ship had sent a distress signal via radio 23 nautical miles (42.6km) southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point.
The message said a fire had broken out in the engine room and a total of 21 crew members were waiting to be rescued, it added.
It then dispatched five ships, including an Anping-class vessel, to the scene to carry out the rescue operation.
At around 6pm, the Anping-class vessel was the first to reach the area where the incident had occurred, and contacted the cargo ship via radio.
The rescue effort was complicated by waves reaching 3m to 4m in height in the area and problems in bringing the rescue ship near to the cargo ship.
The Ministry of National Defense’s search-and-rescue aircraft did not arrive at the scene until about 7pm on Saturday when it brought the four injured crew members to Kaohsiung.
The coast guard said it continued to monitor the situation at the site and contacted the Maritime and Port Bureau’s Southern Maritime Affairs Center, which agreed to dispatch a tugboat to the site, the statement said.
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