The US Navy published photos from sailors practising their firefighting skills and techniques by battling a simulated fire. All sailors are trained in fire fighting and damage control efforts, as many are the fire incidents taking place onboard vessels.
Being the most recent event in a string of fire tragedies within the last year, ‘Grande America’ was the wake-up call to ship operators, industry insurers and regulators who, have been paying more and more attention to reasons that cause or feed such incidents at sea lately.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued an investigation report on the engine room fire onboard the towing vessel ‘Leland Speakes’ on the Lower Mississippi River, in February 2018. A catastrophic failure and crankcase breach of the port main engine caused the fire.
According to local Sandefjord Blad, Bohus, a passenger/cargo ro-ro was on fire, on Thursday, May 16, 2019. The fire incident took place at the Framnes quay in Sandefjord, Norway. The vessel had to be ventilated soon after the fire was extinguished.
Hapag-Lloyd announced that the fire-stricken Yantian Express departed from Freeport, Bahamas, on the evening of May 2019. According to the company, the vessel sailed after ‘all necessary preparatory work could be successfully concluded’.
After Grimaldi’s Grande Europa caught fire, the company launched an appeal to introduce more stringent controls and regulations on cargo sea transport, not only for rolling units but also for containers. Grimaldi Group requested more controls on car batteries, which often cause short-circuits on board vessels, as well as in port terminals.
Grimaldi’s car carrier, Grande Europa, caught fire off the island of Mallorca, Spain, on May 15, the Spanish sea rescue society informed. The fire on the 51,714 GT ship has been brought under control by three fire fighting ships.
One of the 14 people, that suffered injuries after a pipe-laying vessel working in Azerbaijan for Italian oilfield service provider Saipem caught fire, died a Saipem spokesperson announced on Monday, May 13. Generally, the accident took place on May 8. The incident was related to maintenance operations on an item of equipment during pipe-laying activities.
The USCG issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend the rules for recreational vessels by moving fire extinguishing equipment standards for recreational vessels from the uninspected vessel subchapter, which includes requirements for both recreational and commercial vessels, to the subchapter applicable only to recreational vessels.
An explosion and fire aboard the articulated tug and barge ‘Buster Bouchard’ was the result of a lack of effective maintenance and safety management of the barge by the owner company, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in a report released Thursday.
