Near midnight on Tuesday, the car carrier Fremantle Highway, loaded with nearly 3,000 cars, caught fire and has been burning out of control off the Dutch island of Ameland. The Dutch coast guard said one crew member had died and that others were injured. Firefighters are working to save the vessel from potentially sinking close to an important habitat for migratory birds.

Boats and helicopters evacuated the 23 crew members off the ship after they tried unsuccessfully to put out the blaze, the coast guard said in a statement.

Some of the crew members jumped off the ship’s deck 30 meters into the sea and were picked up by a lifeboat, the lifeboat’s captain told Dutch broadcaster NOS. Some of the crew suffered broken bones, burns and breathing problems and were taken to hospitals in the northern Netherlands, emergency services said.

“Currently there are a lot of vessels on scene to monitor the situation and to see how to get the fire under control,” coast guard spokesperson Lea Versteeg said by telephone. “But it’s all depending on weather and the damage to the vessel. So we’re currently working out to see how we can make sure that … the least bad situation is going to happen.” 

Asked if it was possible the ship would sink, Versteeg said, “It’s a scenario we’re taking into account and we’re preparing for all scenarios.”

The sides of the ship were being doused with water to cool it down, but the salvage vessels are avoiding pouring too much water on board because of the risk of a loss of stability that could result in the ship capsizing and sinking.

“The fire is most definitely still not controlled. It’s a very hard fire to extinguish, possibly because of the cargo the ship was transporting,” Versteeg said.

The Fremantle Highway was sailing from the German port of Bremerhaven to Port Said in Egypt when it caught fire about 17 miles north of the Dutch island of Ameland.

Its location is close to a chain of Dutch and German islands popular with tourists in the shallow Wadden Sea, a World Heritage-listed area described by UNESCO as “the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world” and “one of the most important areas for migratory birds in the world.”

The cause of the blaze was not immediately known, and it wasn’t clear how the crew member’s death occurred.

“It’s carrying cars, 2,857 of which 25 are electrical cars, which made the fire even more difficult. It’s not easy to keep that kind of fire under control and even in such a vessel it’s not easy,” Versteeg said. 

According to the Japanese owner of the ship, the company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, there is a good chance that the fire started with electric cars. “But we are not entirely sure of the cause, we are waiting for the investigation,” said a spokesman. He does not know which car brands were transported on the ship.

Their first goal is now to extinguish the fire, says the spokesperson. “Once that’s done, we’ll try to get permission to get the ship into port.” An investigation will then immediately be started into the cause of the fire.

The incident was the latest of several recent fires on car carriers.

Earlier this month, two New Jersey firefighters were killed and five injured battling a blaze on a ro-ro/container ship, Grande Costa D’Avorio, docked at Port Newark, carrying hundreds of vehicles. There were no electric cars on that vessel, the operator said.

Another fire destroyed thousands of luxury cars, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, on the Felicity Ace that burned for two weeks before sinking off the coast of Portugal’s Azores islands in February last year.

Thanks to Alaric Bond and Dick Kooyman for contributing to this post.