During Holy Week, a car fell into the sea during a journey with Fred Olsen between Tenerife and La Gomera. The vehicle owner, Matías, lost a house in the 2021 eruption of the volcano in La Palma.
“As I am a frequent traveller, I travel in gold class and they park your car near the exit. I turned the wheel and pulled the handbrake, as we always do. I exited the vehicle and went up. When the ship leaves the breakwater of the port, there’s a wave and I see the car floating in the water. I was in shock,” the affected person told COPE Canarias in an interview.
A failure in the handbrake, the gear, and the steering, and not a wave hit, caused a vehicle to fall into the sea on Saturday, March 30th, during one of Fred Olsen Express’ crossings between La Gomera and Tenerife, once all the information was analysed and the car was recovered from the water.
The company has indicated that after an internal investigation and the evidence found during the car extraction, the report concludes that the measures specific to any vehicle to secure it when parked did not function correctly. The model involved is a large SUV, and even though the measures indicated in the company’s protocol did not prevent the incident in this specific case, other vehicles of similar size parked next to it were unaffected, Fred Olsen points out.
The fleet director of Fred Olsen Express, Juan Ignacio Liaño, has emphasised that this incident “is a completely isolated event, caused by a chain of circumstances, which could have been avoided if any single one of them had worked correctly.” He reiterated, “When instructions and procedures are carried out properly, the movement of any type of vehicle in the hold becomes unviable, regardless of maritime conditions. In fact, other similar cars in weight and size travelling near the exit, on the same journey, did not move.”
Juan Ignacio Liaño added that from Fred Olsen Express, they want to reassure travellers and refute some information that has emerged, emphasizing the importance of scrupulously following the crew’s instructions when parking vehicles in the ship’s garages. He stated that after evaluating the facts and actions taken that day, they have reinforced the garage parking review protocol for both passengers and crew, and have proceeded to recover the vehicle from the seafloor to avoid possible contaminations in the future, when water corrosion would act on it.
Divers rescued the vehicle from the depths of the sea, as reported by the journalist from Televisión Canaria, Miguel Ángel Reyes Lemus.
In 2022, another vehicle fell into the sea from a Fred Olsen ferry and was also parked in the ‘premium’ area.
