44 more fridges from stricken cargo ship recovered on Vancouver Island beaches

Victoria -

Cleanup efforts continue on northern Vancouver Island where four of the 109 cargo containers that fell off a container ship last month have washed ashore.

The coast guards says 44 refrigerators were removed from a beach near Shuttleworth Bight in Cape Scott Provincial Park this week, along with various pieces of scrap metal and 140 garbage bags filled with packing material.

Refrigerators believed to have washed ashore from the Zim Kingston cargo ship on northern Vancouver Island. (Jerika McArter)

The debris was in addition to the 71 fridges and hundreds of bags of garbage that had been removed from area beaches earlier this month.

Farther south, at Raft Cove Provincial Park, members of the Quatsino First Nation and contractors hired by the stricken vessel's owner have finished emptying one of the four containers that washed ashore.

Two helicopters moved 167 garbage bags of materials and 69 bags of debris from the site, according to the coast guard. Crews remained on site Thursday to cut the beached shipping container apart and prepare it for removal.

Coast guard spokesperson Kiri Westnedge says strong winds and high seas have hampered the salvage operation this week, forcing crews to focus their efforts in more sheltered areas.

There has been no sign of the other 105 containers lost at sea and the coast guard now says that many, if not all of them, have sunk.

The containers were tossed from the Zim Kingston cargo ship during a storm near the entrance to the Juan de Fuca Strait on Oct. 22.

A fire broke out aboard the vessel and the Transportation Safety Board is now investigating the incident.