The Morning Midas caught fire on June 3 and was abandoned with 3,000 vehicles aboard. Photo: Marine Traffic//Geir Vinnes
On June 3, a cargo ship carrying nearly 3,000 vehicles was abandoned in the Pacific Ocean after it caught fire.
According to reports, the Morning Midas departed from the Chinese port of Yantai on May 26. It landed at the port of Nansha and the Shanghai port before carrying on to its eventual destination of Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico. Some 800 of the vehicles aboard were EVs, according to a statement from Zodiac Maritime, the company that managed the vessel.
After smoke was first seen on deck, the crew began firefighting procedures, but they weren’t able to get the blaze under control. All 22 crew members were evacuated by the U.S. Coast Guard and transferred to a merchant ship that was within a few miles of the Morning Midas.
This isn’t the first time a fire has destroyed a cargo ship carrying vehicles. Bloomberg reports that a ship with 4,000 cars sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 2022 after it caught fire, as well as another with nearly 3,000 off the Dutch coast in 2023.
Electric vehicles pose a greater danger when it comes to fires. “Fires involving EVs are often harder to extinguish and more dangerous to fight,” Bloomberg wrote. “The conditions of a tightly packed car-carrying cargo ship lead to limited ventilation, which can rapidly intensify heat. The confined, steel-lined environment makes fire suppression and rescues significantly more dangerous. Additionally, when an electric vehicle burns, it does so for longer and the fire gets hotter. The flames can end up accelerating through chain reactions and spiraling out of control quickly, a process called thermal runaway. EV fires can take up to 8,000 gallons of water to cool the lithium-ion batteries.”
