Taiwan’s coast guard rescued four injured seafarers from a bulker after a fire broke out in its engine room at the weekend.
Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration (CGA) reported that it had received notice that the 50 000-dwt bulker Panoria had suffered an engine room fire off the coast of Kaohsiung in Pintung County at about 5pm on Saturday.
According to the CGA, the crew extinguished the fire, but three crewmembers sustained minor burn injuries and one had serious burns.
The master of the vessel asked the coast guard to evacuate all 21 crew members, but the 17 uninjured seafarers had to remain aboard due to inclement weather during the evacuation.
This was after the Coast Guard deployed five response vessels to the ship, but wave heights of more than 12 feet made it difficult to conduct a ship-to-ship transfer evacuation of the crew.
A Taiwanese Ministry of National Defence helicopter crew also joined the response team and managed to safely evacuate the four injured men to Kaohsiung International Airport, from where they were transferred to hospital.
The remaining crew had to remain aboard the ship because further flight operations were too risky in the poor weather conditions. The tug Salvage Rigger was dispatched to tow the vessel.
Panoria was built in 2008 and is owned and operated in Greece. Her last two port state control inspections in France and Indonesia revealed 19 deficiencies, including problems with firefighting equipment.
