MSC Flaminia The Full Story

n July 14, 2012, a fire broke out in cargo hold number 4 of the MSC Flaminia containership while underway in the North Atlantic on a voyage from Charleston, USA to Bremerhaven, Germany, causing a massive explosion. Of the 22 crew members on board, three were killed – one is thought to have been blown overboard, one died shortly after the blast, and a third died from his wounds almost two months later in a hospital in Portugal. Two others were injured.

There were also 2 passengers on board at the time. One was Johnny Rosen, a resident of Phoenix, Arizona, who, looking for a little bit of adventure and possibly rekindle his maritime past, opted to board the ill-fated containership as a passenger for a ride to Europe. Here is his story:

What day did you leave Charleston?

JR: The Flaminia sailed from Charleston on Saturday, July 7th.

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

What was the trip like prior to the fire and explosion?

JR: Plain sailing! Uneventful.

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

At what time point did the fire break out?

JR: The fire started in the wee hours of Saturday, July 14th. As I awoke in the “Supercargo” cabin at 5am, I saw smoke billowing upwards from containers stacked on hold # 4, and I smelled the nauseating stench of burning plastic. The cabin I was in was near the top of the superstructure, one deck below the bridge, on the port side, and it faces forward. I had a grandstand seat at the unfolding disaster….and I wasn’t a bit happy about it.

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Following the fire, what was the reaction of the crew?

Thirty minutes later the alarm was sounded by the Chief Mate over the Tannoy system. He instructed all on board were to move to the muster stations. Crew (and passengers, myself included) stayed cool, calm and collected, throughout.

At what point did the blast occur?

JR: The big blast occurred at about 8 am on the morning of Saturday, July 14th, three hours after the fire started. It sounded like a five-hundred-pound bomb on a battlefield. It was very violent, and shockingly loud.

GC: Who was fighting the fire when the blast occurred?

JR: Fighting the fire were First Officer, Cezary Siuta; Able Seaman, Ramon Parcon (who appears to have been blown over the side; his body was never found); Bosun, Arnold Nisperos; Oiler, Rolando Gatiera; and Ordinary Seaman, Erdito Banate.

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

How long was it before you boarded the lifeboat?

JR: About two hours; give or take.

Of the two lifeboats, only the starboard boat was launched. Captain Langer decided not to launch the port-side boat, when floating containers that had been blown off the ship, were spotted in the sea, directly below.

Then what happened?

The lifeboat that was eventually launched at about 10am, give or take, after Third Engineer, Bjoern Doermann, forced the stuck brake to release, and the davits to function. With Captain Langer in command, Third Mate Remoroza, at the lifeboat’s helm, steered the boat as close to the burning Flaminia as possible to allow Second Officer Thiele Holger, and Oiler Bonifacio Bancale to grab a rope ladder and climb back up to the hatch deck to search for First Mate Siuta and missing AB Ramon Parcon.

Once on board, Holger and Bancale struggled to load seriously burned First Mate Cesary Siuta, into a life raft, then battled to lower the raft down to the choppy water.

All this time, the lifeboat in which we sat, helplessly, was being tossed around directly below a dozen broken and damaged containers teetering dangerously on the edge of the deck, sixty feet above the water.

As the orange lifeboat bashed and bounced against the Flaminia’s hull, some of the crew and the other passenger were becoming increasingly sea sick, using their orange helmets as vomit buckets.

It was imperative to keep the lifeboat close to the Flaminia and while trying to avoid crashing against the hull as Holger and Bancale rescued the First Mate.

Once Siuta, Bancale and Holger were safely in the raft, a tow-line was used to connect the raft to the lifeboat.

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen

Shortly thereafter, the DS Crown, a 300,000-ton supertanker, which dwarfed the Flaminia, almost magically appeared and our lifeboat then maneuvered toward it. The tanker came to within a few hundred yards from the Flaminia and its Russian and Filipino crew immediately sprung into action, lowering a rescue basket to snatch survivors from the Flaminia’s lifeboat bobbing in the water, far below.

Getting the Flaminia’s badly wounded seafarers into the basket was a brutal job.

Credit for his super-human effort goes to Third Engineer Doermann, who single-handedly made it happen, with help from Captain Langer and one gutsy Filipino seaman.

Burn Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

JR: From the burning deck of the Flaminia, Second-Mate Holger had lowered a rope ladder. Oiler Bancale had climbed up to the deck, and worked with him to save First Mate Cesary Siuta.

Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

In the flimsy liferaft now being towed by our lifeboat to the DS Crown, was First Mate Cesary Siuta, accompanied by Bancale and Holger, who loyally stayed with him.

With terrible burns however, poor Cesary had less than an hour to live.

Using their huge white-painted crane like a surgical cherry-picker, the crew of the DS Crown expertly plucked all of us from the top of our rocking and rolling lifeboat with their rescue net, as the boat repeatedly bashed against the DS Crown’s enormous hull. Third Engineer Doermann, Captain Langer, and a Filipino crewmember manhandled us into the rescue basket, one and two at a time.

Holger and Bancale had managed to bring First Mate Siuta down to the water and had found a way to load him into the life raft even as his life was ebbing away.

The blast had so badly burned his lips and his lungs and his mouth, that he could not inhale the oxygen that the Russian officers, Shkolnikov and Chernayevskiy, had struggled to give him as he lay dying on the deck of the DS Crown.

Badly burned Cesary Suita is given oxygen, Photo (c) Johnny Rosen, 2012

As First Mate Siuta lay close to death in the liferaft, on the deck of the DS Crown, his charred flesh and skin glued to the raft, there was no talk nor discussion about the ship which continued to burn among the Flaminia’s survivors, nor among the DS Crown’s crew.

They eventually abandoned their futile efforts and carried him to the DS Crown’s hospital, where he passed away, just minutes later.

His very last words, to us, were “I’m dying.”

Words which will haunt all of us forever.

The MSC Stella arrived on scene two hours later to evacuate Nisperos, Gatiera, and Banate, who would soon be winched over the side of the DS Crown, and down to the Stella’s rescue boat.

Nisperos and Banate have now spent two months in the burn unit in Portugal, and their prognosis is good, but sadly, Oiler Ramon Gatiera passed on just a week ago.