Race to salvage fire-ravaged US-bound cargo ship drifting in the Atlantic with thousands of supercars on board including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis with blaze fueled by batteries in electric vehicles
Rescuers are racing to salvage a US-bound cargo ship in the Atlantic engulfed in flames with 4,000 cars on board including Bentleys, Audis and Lamborghinis
Lithium-ion batteries in the electric cars on board have caught fire and the blaze requires specialist equipment to extinguish. Investigators are probing whether the batteries started the onboard inferno.
The ship is still ablaze and plumes of white smoke are billowing from the vessel as a Portuguese navy ship works to stop it sinking with the 3,965 Volkswagen AG vehicles on board, including 1,100 Porches and 189 Bentleys, thought to be worth a combined £120 million.
One man said his custom-ordered Porsche Boxster Spyder, whose base models sell for at least $100,000 was on board the ship.
The Felicity Ace sounded the alarm after a fire broke out in the hold, the Portuguese Navy said in a statement. The cause of the fire is not known.
The ship was sailing from Emden in Germany and had left on February 10 and was heading to the port of Davisville in the U.S. state of Rhode Island, according to online vessel trackers.
Captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas said: 'The ship is burning from one end to the other... everything is on fire about five meters above the water line.'
Eager Porsche buyers logging into the Track Your Dream service, which details the progress of the car's delivery, stated how the company was 'aware of an incident on the Felicity Ace carrying certain Porsche vehicles.'
Matt Farah, the man behind The Smoking Tire YouTube channel, posted Wednesday regarding his own Porsche that was apparently onboard the ship.
'I ordered a Boxster Spyder in August, and I was very excited to get it at the end of this month, and now it seems like it might become an artificial reef,' said Matt Farah who runs the Smoking Tire YouTube channel, which has more than 1 million subscribers.
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