A fire that broke out on a car ferry carrying 300 people off Sweden’s coast on Monday has been extinguished, Swedish maritime authorities said. The ship was later towed to port. The blaze reportedly started on a refrigeration lorry on the car deck of the Stena Scandica, which was sailing from Sweden to Latvia.
“The fire is out,” Swedish Maritime Administration spokeswoman Lisa Mjorning told AFP.
“The ferry will be towed to port in the next three to four hours,” she said, adding that it would be towed to Nynashamn, south of Stockholm.
Earlier reports suggested that passengers were being evacuated, but later it was confirmed that the 300 people on board had remained on the vessel. “There are no injuries on board and there has been no evacuation,” she said.
A spokesman for the company Stena Line operating the ferry had said it was “a limited fire…concentrated to a cooling truck on the car deck” and that there had been “mainly smoke”.
The Swedish Maritime Administration had sent three helicopters and seven vessels to the vessel, which was located off the island of Gotska Sandon on Sweden’s southeastern coast.
(With inputs from agencies)
