Thousands of luxury cars have been burning on the ship for days. Why is the fire still consuming Felicity Ace?

Today, buying a new car is a huge challenge. Prices soared, waiting times for delivery were significantly lengthened, and here please – on February 16, some 170 km off the southern coast in Portugal, fire began to burn thousands of Volkswagen luxury cars aboard the Felicity Ace freighter. Why has nobody saved them, even though it has been almost a week since a fire broke out in the cargo area of ​​the ship and the crew was exported by the Portuguese Navy?

Felicity Ace continues to burn, and with it 4,000 luxury cars from brands under the Volkswagen group

Although the ship is surrounded by vast amounts of water on all sides, something that comes to our mind first in the fight against fire, the firefighters still have not managed to contain the fire on Felicity Ace. This one has been destroying both the transport and the cars on it for the entire five days, so one important question can be asked – why?

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Contrary to appearances, firefighters are still fighting a fire on a ship filled with thousands of luxury cars. The problem is that Felicity Ace is a hopeless case because a fire is difficult to control with the amount of time it takes. The process has to be carried out “very slowly” and it is not helped by the fact that firefighters cannot even come on board as it is “very dangerous”. Their activities are limited to attempts to cool its structure, i.e. many hundreds of tons of metal sheet.

The problem is caused by the presence of electric cars on board, whose lithium-ion batteries also burn (it is not known if they were the direct cause of the fire), and their fire cannot be suppressed with traditional water extinguishers. The mere “flooding” of the ship with water is also pointless, as it would most likely make it unstable. The race against time continues, however, as the fire is approaching the fuel tanks, and the whole problem is not so much about saving cars, but about protecting the marine environment from pollution.