C1/​2001M Fire on­board trawler RANDÖ and her sink­ing off Rauma 26th Feb­ru­ary, 2001

31.12.2001

Trawler RANDÖ was en route from Rauma to Reposaari when fire broke out in her engine room at 18.00 hours on 26th February 2001. The Master emptied two portable extinguishers but that did not help and he had to leave the engine room. Also the bridge was filled with smoke soon. The Master and the deckhand had to climb on to the shelter deck for safe. They contacted the rescue centre with a mobile phone.

The men lowered the life raft on vessel’s side at 18.30. At this stage the fire spread outside the superstructure. When at 18.55 the vessel’s superstructure had collapsed about one meter the men abandoned the vessel and moved over in to the life raft. A rescue helicopter lifted them up to safe at 19.25 and took them to Rauma.

RANDÖ was drifting with the fire onboard. In the evening of the next day there were still some fire onboard, it was tried to get the vessel on tow but that did not succeed. RANDÖ sank at 01.30 on 28th February 2001.

The exact cause of the fire could not been defined. The main engine was of a type to which there had been fires in electrical cables. In RANDÖ’s engine room there was a fire in the electrical cables only when the engine had been in use some 200 hours. After the sinking of RANDÖ it was tried to lift her engine for special examinations, but this did not succeed. In underwater examinations, diving, it was noted that all the electronic cables had been destroyed totally.

Some exhaust piping and part of funnel of the heating boiler could be lifted up from the wreck. In these several holes were found. In the examinations of a Technical Research Centre (VTT) the were no that kind of evidence found which could have shown that these holes had been the cause for the fire. According the examination report the holes had been a result of the excessive heat of the fire.