Oil Tanker and Container Ship Collide in the North Sea

A container ship collided with a U.S.-flagged oil tanker off the northeastern coast of England, according to emergency responders, who scrambled to the scene on Monday morning. Initial images shared by the BBC showed fire and thick black smoke rising from the ships, and local authorities said that a number of people had been taken to area hospitals.

The British coast guard said it was “coordinating the emergency response to reports of a collision between a tanker and cargo vessel off the coast of East Yorkshire,” and that an alarm was first raised at 9:48 a.m. local time.

Rescue helicopters were in the area, and lifeboats were deployed from a number of stations along the coast, as well as vessels with “firefighting capability,” the coast guard said in a statement.

Although the coast guard did not confirm whether an oil spill had taken place, it said that it was assessing “the likely counter pollution response required.”

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a charity that coordinates lifeboats around the British coast, said there were reports “that a number of people had abandoned the vessels following a collision, and there were fires on both ships.”

Information from Marine Traffic, a website that tracks vessels, appeared to show the Stena Immaculate, an oil tanker, and the Solong, a container ship, on an intersecting route surrounded by emergency response vessels just off the coast of the mouth of the River Humber, near Hull.

According to the tracker, the Stena Immaculate, a U.S.-flagged vessel, was anchored at the time of the crash, raising questions about how the two vessels had managed to collide during the daylight hours. The Solong, sailing under the Portuguese flag, was headed to Rotterdam in the Netherlands after leaving a port in Scotland on Sunday, according to the vessel tracker.

Erik Hanell, the chief executive of Stena Bulk, which co-owns the Stena Immaculate, told the BBC that all of the crew of that tanker were accounted for and safe.

Martyn Boyers, the chief executive of the port of Grimsby East, spoke to Sky News, a British news channel, and said that the area had been foggy on Monday morning, which may have contributed to visibility issues. He said that at least 32 people had been brought into the port of Grimsby and that some of them had been taken by ambulance to local hospitals. It remains unclear how many of those people were injured.

“Altogether, 32 casualties were brought through the port, and there was a line of ambulances waiting to take them to Princess Diana Hospital, which is what they’re still doing now,” he told Sky News. He added, “This morning, it’s been very foggy, and the fog has never lifted. So I would imagine that at that time, when the accident took place, that there would have been fog.”

A spokesman for the East Midlands Ambulance Service said it had sent “multiple resources,” including a hazardous area response team, to the port in Grimsby.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.