22 crew members rescued from lifeboat in North Pacific after cargo ship carrying 3,000 vehicles catches fire

Mark Thiessen · The Associated Press

· Posted: Jun 05, 2025 5:15 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

The unit of a cargo vessel carrying 3,000 vehicles to Mexico, including 800 electrical vehicles, abandoned vessel aft they could not power a occurrence aboard the vas successful waters disconnected Alaska's Aleutian land chain.

A ample plume of fume was initially seen astatine the ship's stern coming from the platform loaded with electrical vehicles Tuesday, according to U.S. Coast Guard photos and a Wednesday connection from the ship's absorption company, London-based Zodiac Maritime. There were nary reported injuries among the 22 unit members of the Morning Midas.

Crew members abandoned ship, were evacuated onto a lifeboat and rescued by the unit of a adjacent merchant vas called the Cosco Hellas successful the North Pacific, astir 490 kilometres southwest of Adak Island. Adak is astir 1,930 kilometres west of Anchorage, the state's largest city.

The unit initiated exigency firefighting procedures with the ship's onboard occurrence suppression system, but they were incapable bring the flames nether control.

"The applicable authorities person been notified, and we are moving intimately with exigency responders with a tug being deployed to enactment salvage and firefighting operations," Zodiac Maritime said successful a statement.

"Our priorities are to guarantee the continued information of the unit and support the marine environment."

The U.S. Coast Guard said it sent aircrews to Adak and a vessel to the area. The presumption of the occurrence onboard the vessel was chartless arsenic of Wednesday afternoon, but fume was inactive emanating from it, according to the Coast Guard.

Rear Admiral Megan Dean, commandant of the Coast Guard's Seventeenth District, said successful a connection that arsenic the hunt and rescue portion of the effect concluded, the Coast Guard was moving with Zodiac Maritime to find however to retrieve the vessel and what volition beryllium done with it.

"We are grateful for the selfless actions of the 3 adjacent vessels who assisted successful the effect and the unit of centrifugal vas Cosco Hellas, who helped prevention 22 lives," Dean said.

The 183-metre Morning Midas, a car and motortruck carrier, was built successful 2006 and sails nether a Liberian flag. The cars near Yantai, China, connected May 26, according to the manufacture ship-tracking site marinetraffic.com. They were being shipped to Lazaro Cardenas, a large Pacific larboard successful Mexico.

Earlier this month, a Dutch information committee called for improving exigency effect connected North Sea shipping routes aft a deadly 2023 occurrence connected a freighter that was carrying 3,000 automobiles, including astir 500 electrical vehicles, from Germany to Singapore.

That occurrence killed 1 person, injured others and burned retired of power for a week, and the vessel was yet towed to a larboard successful the bluish Netherlands for salvage.

The mishap accrued the absorption connected information issues connected the unfastened oversea and connected containers that autumn disconnected the monolithic freighters, which person accrued successful size dramatically successful caller decades. More than 80 per cent of planetary commercialized by measurement present arrives by sea, and the largest instrumentality vessels are longer than 3 shot fields.