by Authorities continued to evaluate this Saturday how to combat a fire that occurred two days ago aboard a freighter transporting nearly 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries and which was ordered to remain off the coast of Alaska.
The U.S. Coast Guard said there were no injuries among the 19 crew members aboard the ship, Genius Star XI, and it remained seaworthy.
The exact cause of the fire is unknown and remains under investigation. The Coast Guard could not immediately confirm who owns the ship or say what other cargo it is carrying. The ship’s point of origin and destination were not available.
The fire occurred in the cargo holds where lithium-ion batteries were located, which contain highly flammable materialswere being stored.
“These are very hot, very energetic fires,” said Richard Burke, a professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the Maritime College of the State University of New York. These fires can be long-lasting and difficult to put out, he added.
He coastguard He ordered the ship to stay two miles off the coast of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and officials established a one-mile safety zone around the ship for the duration of the response effort.
A fire broke out in two separate cargo holds, said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Salerno, spokesman for Coast Guard District 17, which covers 47,300 miles of coastline in Alaska and the Arctic.
The ship’s fire suppression systems extinguished one of the fires. Crew members closed the other cargo hold and were taking temperature readings, which were normal as of Saturday, Commander Salerno said.
There were no signs of heat damage outside the cargo hold and authorities plan to monitor the temperature to see if it continues to drop.
A team of marine firefighting experts who boarded the ship Thursday to assess its condition found no signs of structural deformation or blistering outside the compartment, the Coast Guard said.
That the ship is still intact and afloat is good news for the environment, Professor Burke said.
These ships can carry hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo, such as silk blouses, beer, laptops and other commercial products, which could potentially pollute the ocean if the ship were to sink.
“The ship also has fuel,” he noted. “If the ship is lost, the fuel also goes into the sea.”
While fires on cargo ships are rare, they are not unheard of, Professor Burke said.
In July, a cargo ship carrying nearly 3,000 cars off the Dutch island of Ameland in the North Sea caught fire, killing one crew member and injuring 22 others.
In 2022, a freighter carrying around 4,000 cars, including Porsches and Bentleys, caught fire 400 kilometers from the Azores and sank two weeks later.
