The fishing ship Amaltal Columbia caught fire 45 nautical miles off Lyttelton, New Zealand. On board of the vessel there were 45 crew members, who were immediately evacuated to a liferaft and later taken into a Coastguard’s rescue boat. The fire on board started from the meal hold, because of technical malfuction in the cooling system. The officers closed the cargo hold and tried to extinguish the fire by interrupting the access of oxygen, but without any success. All the crew abandoned the ship and two tugs headed to the vessel trying to extinguish the fire. The main engine is also affected and might defected during the accident. The fishing ship Amaltal Columbia is now drifting with 7.5 knots to New Zealand coast and two tugs are performing salvage operations but the big swell and the strong wind are delaying it.
The ship Amaltal Columbia (IMO: 8913265) was operating as a deep water fishing factory and has large capacity and size. The length of the vessel is 65.00 m, the beam is 14.00 m and the summer draft is 3.70 m. The gross tonnage of the fishing ship is 1,899 GRT and on board are prepared thousands tons of fish. The ship was built in by the Norwegian company Sterkoder Shipbuilding in 1992 and operated by the New Zealand company Talley´s Group.