FIRE aboard RUSSIAN TRAWLER

A large freezer fish trawler, Mlechny Put (Milky Way), caught fire yesterday. The vessel was catching fish 40 miles away from the south-eastern edge of Cape Irimo on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The captain gave a distress signal after a fire suddenly broke out in the engine room. The fire has been extinguished by now, and the compartment has been made air-tight, deputy chief of the Vladivostok sea rescue-coordinating centre Anatoly Rogachev is quoted by RIA Novosti as saying. Continuous cooling of the engine room's bulkheads with water is reportedly going on. As Mr. Rogachev noted, the fact that the fire is being extinguished by cooling the bulkheads is hampering the struggle with fire which emerges in different places of the engine room. Crews of several ships which were in the region of the accident came to help the Mlechny Put. The latter's crew was evacuated to the Kalper trawler.