On the morning of 15 November, a fire broke out in the engine room of the crew transfer vessel (CTV) World Calima that was operating at the Nordsee Ost offshore wind farm. Eight wind farm technicians and five crew members were aboard the CTV at the time and nobody was hurt during the incident.
The rescue vessel of the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service (DGzRS) responded to a distress call and then took over eight wind farm technicians from aboard the CTV, and started hauling the stricken vessel to the German island of Helgoland.
In the engine room of World Calima, operated by World Marine Offshore, the crew had noticed heavy smoke and then engaged in putting the fire under control with on-board resources by locking the engine room and flooding it with carbon dioxide.
At the time of the incident, winds of up to 28 km/h were blowing in the sea area northwest of Helgoland. The nearby wind farm vessel Windea Two made the first connection to the World Calima, to tow it out of the wind farm and to avoid a collision with wind turbines.
Once DGzRS arrived at the site with its vessels, they took over the technicians from the CTV onboard one of their vessels, while the Wold Calima crew remained onboard their CTV that was towed to Helgoland, where a firefighting unit from the Cuxhaven fire department was brought to take further measures together with the volunteer fire brigade from Helgoland in the island’s harbour.
Check out a short video from DGzRS, showing the CTV being towed: