Us-Gov-Vessel

A fire broke out in the engine room of the "Cape Knox" which was berthed at the Poland Avenue Wharf in New Orleans, in the afternoon of May 31, 2019. The fire department was alerted at 4.20 p.m. and deployed fire engines who attended within five minutes. The fire smouldered inside a roughly 100-square-foot container filled with diesel fuel sludge near the ship’s engine room. A second-alarm was requested at 5:03 p.m. as difficulty was encountered while attempting to access the area where the fire was located. Firefighters were forced to use confined space operations techniques, removing their normal firefighting gear to crawl through a small access space one at a time. Once firefighters reached the area where the fire was located there was only minutes left to work on extinguishing the fire before their air tanks were depleted. At 6.30 p.m. the fire was under control. One firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation in hospital. According to preliminary investigations, oil residues had caught fire, when contracted workers were carrying out wielding works aboard the ship which was docked in New Orleans since Feb 18 for maintenance works. Reports with photos: https://www.nola.com/crime/2019/06/firefighter-workers-injured-in-2-alarm-fire-aboard-ship-docked-at-bywater-wharf.html https://www.fox8live.com/2019/06/01/nofd-firefighter-injured-fighting-two-alarm-ship-fire/