Authorities on Saturday continued to assess how to fight a fire that broke out two days ago aboard a cargo ship carrying nearly 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries and ordered to stay off the coast of Alaska.
The US Coast Guard said none of the 19 crew members aboard the ship, Genius Star XI, were injured and that it remained seaworthy.
The exact cause of the fire is unknown and remains under investigation. The Coast Guard did not immediately confirm who owned the vessel or what other cargo it was carrying. The ship’s origin and destination are not available.
The fire broke out in the cargo holds where the lithium-ion batteries, which contained highly flammable materialsis stored.
“These are very hot, very strong fires,” said Richard Burke, a professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the State University of New York Maritime College. Such fires can be long-lasting and difficult to put out, he added.
The Coast guard the vessel was ordered to remain two miles offshore from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and officials established a one-mile safety zone around the vessel for the duration of the response effort.
A fire broke out in two separate cargo holds, said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Salerno, a spokesman for the 17th Coast Guard District, covering 47,300 miles of coastline across Alaska and the Arctic.
The ship’s fire systems extinguished one of the fires. Crew members sealed off other cargo holds and were taking temperature readings, which were normal 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 goods, which could potentially contaminate the ocean if the ship sinks.
“The ship also has fuel,” he said. “If you lose the ship, the fuel goes overboard too.”
Although fires on cargo ships are rare, they don’t go unnoticed, Professor Burke said.
In July, a cargo ship carrying nearly 3,000 vehicles from the Dutch island of Ameland in the North Sea caught fire, killing one crew member and injuring 22 others.
In 2022, a cargo ship carrying about 4,000 cars, including Porsches and Bentleys, caught fire 250 miles off the Azores and sank two weeks later.
