Salvage crew bound for the site of a cargo ship fire off the coast of Alaska

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A salvage team is expected to arrive early next week at the scene of a cargo ship that was carrying about 3,000 vehicles to Mexico when it caught fire in waters off Alaska’s Aleutian island chain.

A tug carrying salvage specialists and special equipment is expected to arrive at the location of the Morning Midas around Monday, the ship’s management company, London-based Zodiac Maritime, said Thursday. The crew will assess the ship's condition, and a separate tug with firefighting and ocean towage capabilities is being arranged, the company said in its statement. In the meantime, officials are using the ship's onboard satellite-connected systems to monitor it.

The vessel remained afloat as of Thursday morning, and images gathered by the U.S. Coast Guard showed it was still “alight with smoke emanating” from it, the statement said.

The Coast Guard has said it received a distress alert around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday about a fire aboard the Morning Midas, which was roughly 300 miles (490 kilometers) southwest of Adak Island. The ship was carrying about 70 fully electric and about 680 hybrid vehicles, the Coast Guard said, noting that the information was preliminary.

Adak is about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) west of Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city.

All 22 Morning Midas crew members were uninjured. They were evacuated onto a lifeboat and a nearby merchant vessel rescued them. They remained onboard the rescue vessel Thursday, according to Zodiac Maritime.

The 600-foot (183-meter) Morning Midas was built in 2006 and sails under a Liberian flag. The car and truck carrier left Yantai, China, on May 26, according to the industry site marinetraffic.com. It was headed to a major Pacific port in Mexico.

A Dutch safety board in a recent report called for improving emergency response on North Sea shipping routes after a deadly 2023 fire aboard a freighter that was carrying 3,000 automobiles, including nearly 500 electric vehicles, from Germany to Singapore.

One person was killed and others injured in the fire, which burned out of control for a week. That ship was eventually towed to a Netherlands port for salvage.