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- Ελληνικά
For the fifth day, today, the Euroferry Olympia is on fire and the thriller of finding the 10 missing people continues. Yesterday Monday, and while the EMAK rescue teams were reinforced with a total of 42 people plus experts from the Dutch company Smit Salvage, which owns the tugs, it has not been possible to locate any of the people on board. Searches continued in shifts throughout the night from Sunday to Monday which did not happen yesterday from Tuesday to Tuesday.
In fact, the fire reached the bow where explosions occurred and the rescue operation was stopped to resume this morning at first light as the Port Authorities officially informed last night. According to experts the glowing of the sheet metal despite efforts to cool it with water reached the storage area of flammable materials in the large warehouse that is almost always located in the bow the so-called "soap" which is filled with paints, sprays, turpentine, gasoline for cleaning, brushes and which are used by the crew for the maintenance of the ship's premises.
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Despite efforts to bring the temperature down by rushing water from tugboats and firefighters, the fire has spread and the anxiety to locate the missing or, in the words of other experts, the trapped is growing. Officials fear the worst since the discovery of an Afghan passenger of one of the two rescued by EMAK men in the first critical 24 hours, who had not cut a ticket and was therefore not registered, may mean that there were others who entered the ship illegally and are not on the passenger list.
The effort of the rescue teams is difficult as they have to search 155 trucks spread over the four garages - lower deck (1); main deck (2), upper deck (3) and open deck (4) - through difficult conditions, in a red-hot atmosphere full of toxic gases.
The operation until yesterday involved three Coast Guard floats that were simply monitoring the sea area around the ship , five tugboats, a Fire Department boat and a Navy helicopter and a Coast Guard helicopter were on standby.
As experts point out, "the drivers of the cargo vehicles are not allowed to be in the garage area during the voyage. In fact, for security reasons, the garages are protected and no entry is allowed since the doors are closed and in case someone from the garage wants to go outside, the doors are opened from the inside to the outside as an escape but not from the outside to the inside" and they add:
" So anyone who has been in the garage either stayed from the time the vehicle was loaded and didn't get out or had the assistance of someone from the ship to get to the truck later. Apart from this, as part of fire safety patrols are compulsory in all areas by crew members throughout the voyage which means that if there was a driver in the garage he could have been noticed during the patrol and asked to come out immediately."
Source: Proto Thema
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