Turkish Tanker, Nazo S, Ablaze in the Adriatic, 12 Crew Rescued
Original source: SeaNews Turkey
Turkish tanker NAZO S, with twelve crew onboard, at around 18:30 21 June, went up in flames. The fire, according to the first indicated information, came about due to an electrical short circuit. The Nazo S caught fire at 37 km from the Italian coast Civitanovese. The aft section of the ship, the accommodation area, was reported destroyed.
All twelve of the seafarers of the ship were rescued by three patrol boats from Ancona harbour. The harbour master put into place all necessary procedures to prevent possible damage to the environment. A Pescara Coast Guard plane took off to douse the flames and continued to monitor the situation. The tanker appeared devoid of oil cargo.
The alarm occurred in the afternoon, said the maritime authorities of Croatia, who alerted the Operations Centre of Rome and the general command of the harbour authorities. The Maritime Directorate of Ancona, who coordinated the rescue, immediately launched three Coast Guard patrol boats - from the capital, San Benedetto del Tronto and from Civitanova Marche - and contacted three vessels in the area.
One of these - the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged container "Annamarie" - had reached the ship on fire and rescued the 12 crew who had abandoned the vessel and had boarded a lifeboat.
Two tugs with firefighting systems from Ravenna Sers Group and stationed in the port of Ancona arrived on the scene. There was a potential danger of fuel oil leak from the stricken vessel into the sea along the journey to the Galatians, on the shores of Danube, Romania. Due to the risk of marine pollution, the national consortium Castalia was alerted, which deals with environmental protection of the coast: the alarm saw two appropriately equipped vessels, the Secomar 4, stationed in Ravenna and the Monterosa, stationed in Giulianova, mobilised.
At about 19:00, the 12 crew members were said to have been rescued by the container ship diverted to the incident site. During the night, the crew arrived in Ancona, where they were questioned by the Coast Guard in the investigation into the causes of how the fire occurred.
The fire was reported extinguished at 0500 on 22 June. After water and foam from the two tugboats and with firefighters despatched by the Port of Ancona had been applied to fight the blaze, but the cameras report that in some areas of the hull, the temperature still approached 100 degrees.
There is some uncertainty over the fate of the ship: ''We're trying to track down the owner of the tanker Nazo S - said Admiral John Pettorino, commander of the Maritime Directorate of Ancona - to understand if we are 'able to tow it to a nearby port, or how they intend to proceed.''
The Nazo S, is a chemical tanker of 91 meters, about 2,200 gross tons , built in 1975. It had sailed from the Egyptian port of Damietta and had arrived in Ravenna where it offloaded 950 tons of ethanol. The Turkish ship left Ravenna 'gas free' it was reported.
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