Saturday 12 October 2024 · below the Index · spike

Oil tanker fire off German Baltic coast

Type fireWhere Baltic Sea, off GermanyWindow 2024-10-11 → 2024-10-12 (2 days)

An oil tanker caught fire off Germany's Baltic Sea coast on October 11, 2024. All 7 crew members were rescued. The vessel was towed to a northern German port and the fire was extinguished by October 12.

Peak 64.6 on Saturday 12 October 2024. The shaded band is the incident window.

Where the attention came from

Search
8%
Research
0%
News
77%
Social
15%

Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day.

Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.

How unusual it was

64.6
Index at peak (50 = calmest year)
63%
of days since 2020 rank below it
1 days
for the extra attention to halve
2 days
back to the pre-incident level

This was above 63% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 4 October 2024.

How far it spread

Tankers
Shipping in general
Car carriers (ro-ro)
Gas carriers
Bulk carriers
Container & cargo ships

No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.

Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.

How it was framed the frame glossary →

People
77%
Politics
11%
Planet
5%
Price
4%
Progress
3%

Lead frame: human drama. Trade press was 3% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)

Acting, or acted upon

entirely acted uponmostly acted uponneutralmostly actorprimary actor

In 92% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 21% of it was strongly negative in tone.

What the coverage said

  • German Oil Tanker Ablaze in Baltic Seagcaptain.com · 2024-10-11
  • Fire breaks out on an oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coast. All 7 crew members are rescued – Winnipeg Free Presswinnipegfreepress.com · 2024-10-11
  • Fire breaks out on oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coast. All 7 crew members are rescuedtheweek.in · 2024-10-11
  • Oil Tanker Catches Fire Off Germany's Baltic Sea Coastbiztoc.com · 2024-10-11
  • Black smoke billows out as fire burns at oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coastoffshore-energy.biz · 2024-10-11
  • Fire on board oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coast extinguishedcountytimes.co.uk · 2024-10-12

Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.

Data for this incident (JSON)

Maritime Attention Index, incident: Oil tanker fire off German Baltic coast, peak 64.6 on 12 October 2024. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2024-oil-tanker-fire-off-german-baltic-coast/

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