COLOMBO — A fire aboard a ship that triggered Sri Lanka’s worst-ever marine ecological disaster was finally extinguished Tuesday after a 13-day international operation, the navy said.
The near two-week inferno prompted a mammoth clean-up operation as huge volumes of microplastic granules from the Singapore-registered ship’s containers inundated 80 kilometers (50 miles) of beach.
The unprecedented pollution forced a fishing ban and saw thousands of troops deployed to scoop tonnes of burnt plastic from beaches.
Experts from Dutch salvage company SMIT boarded the MV X-Press Pearl Tuesday and reported massive flooding of the engine rooms.
Sri Lankan navy divers were also dep…
Keep on reading: Sri Lanka faces marine disaster as ship fire extinguished after 13 days