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Fresh fires that erupted on a big oil tanker drifting off Sri Lanka are under control once more, the nation’s navy mentioned Wednesday.
A brand new blaze broke out Monday on the MT New Diamond, which was carrying practically 2 million barrels of crude oil, and reached the magnitude of final week’s fireplace, solely a day after it was extinguished. Officials have warned of huge environmental harm to Sri Lanka’s coast if the ship leaks or explodes.
“The fire has now been brought under control and the ship is being towed by a tugboat to out to sea,” mentioned navy spokesperson Indika de Silva.
“There are no flames or smoke to be noticed as of now,” he mentioned, including that the navy’s specifically educated firefighting and catastrophe administration group will be a part of with firefighting consultants from India’s coast guard and specialists despatched by the ship’s proprietor on Wednesday to evaluate the scenario.
Ten British and Dutch professionals, together with rescue operation specialists, catastrophe evaluators and authorized consultants, reached the scene on Monday and are ready to board the tanker to start the mission of salvaging it. The consultants had been despatched by New Shipping Ltd., the industrial proprietor of the New Diamond in Athens, Greece.
The tanker is about 30 nautical miles (55 kilometers) off the coast and the plan is to place it’s at 40 nautical miles to facilitate salvaging work, de Silva mentioned.
The tanker was transporting crude oil from the port of Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip, the place the state-owned Indian Oil Corp. has a refinery.
High winds, excessive temperatures on the ship and sparks reignited the recent fires, the navy mentioned, including that thus far there is no such thing as a danger of an oil leak or of the hearth spreading into the oil storage space.
The navy mentioned the preliminary fireplace started in an engine room boiler however didn’t unfold to the place the oil is saved.
The navy mentioned Tuesday that “a diesel patch” had been noticed within the ocean about 1 kilometer (half a mile) from the ship. The patch is more likely to be diesel gas from the ship, it mentioned. The ship has about 1,700 tons of gas to energy its engines.
An Indian coast guard plane sprayed a chemical on the patch to reduce harm.
The preliminary fireplace killed one Filipino crew member and injured one other, whereas 21 different crew members escaped unhurt.
Twenty of them had been taken to the southern port metropolis of Galle on Tuesday, whereas the captain remained on a ship close to the tanker to assist with firefighting efforts.
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