Oil tanker fire; Foreign experts arrived

September 06, 2020

Ten British and Netherlands professionals with expertise in rescue operations, disaster evaluation and legal consultation arrived in the island this morning and are expected to make recommendations as to how future events to be planned, upon inspection of the disaster management work of the MT New Diamond.

Apart from that a team headed by the Chief Firefighting Officer of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority is scheduled to visit the distressed oil tanker today.

For the first time since the accident, the Navy will provide the opportunity to the 20 crew members who were rescued from the distressed vessel and now safely onboard SLNS Sindurala to connect with their near and dear ones by telephone.

The joint disaster relief operation, which is being carried out on the instruction of experts, has so far successfully contained the spread of the ship's fire and there is no report of the ship leaking oil into the sea.