Fire on Corvette Soobrazitelny: Danes, Germans, Norwegians Helped

07.09.2012 Danish press published details of the fire happened on Sept 2 in engine-room of Russian Guards corvette Soobrazitelny when anchored out of Danish naval station Frederikshavn. The newest Baltic Fleet's warship was supposed to attend the DANEX-NOCO-2012 large-scale joint naval exercise.

According to the website of Danish Home Guard, crew of Maritime Force Protection patrol boat noticed severe smoke onboard the Russian corvette and immediately reported to a duty officer of the naval station. The officer at once alarmed all rescue forces of Denmark and other states located around. Naval Home Guard promptly sent all four inflatable boats to the incident site.

After the alarm call, all available emergency rescue assets of the base were called, as well as rescue teams from foreign ships anchored nearby. Half an hour later, a rescue helicopter landed aboard the corvette and brought German and Norwegian firefighters and special equipment. Acting together with the ship's crew, they managed to neutralize the fire.

There is one more reason why the crew of Soobrazitelny could not cope with the fire alone. Considerable part of the crew, 47 men were on leave ashore (normally, the crew strength is about 100 men but some other specialists could be attached to the ship for such kind of exercise). As long as the area was closed due to fire alarm, they were not allowed to return on board and stayed ashore until the fire was extinguished. The mariners got back to the ship only 1.5 hours later.

After a while, having eliminated damages caused by the fire consequences and firefighting operation, Russian corvette Soobrazitelny left the harbor of Frederikshavn and set a course for homebase Baltiysk.