The Newark fire department’s lack of training and familiarity with marine firefighting during a deadly cargo ship fire at the East
Coast’s largest port in July 2023 amounted to a “failure of leadership,” the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.
The board met publicly in Washington to unveil its findings about the in
ferno inside the Italian-flagged Grande Costa D’Avorio, which smoldered for nearly a week and resulted in the deaths of two Newark firefighters.
In addition to singling out Newark’s fire department for criticism, the board a
lso found that the fire ignited when cargo loaders used a Jeep that wasn’t designed for such work to push vehicles into position. It also found that a carbon dioxide fire suppression
system was ineffective because a large hydraulic door had to be closed for it to operate correctly, and could only be shut from ins
de, where the fire was raging in cramped conditions, with vehicles parked as narrowly as 4 inches (10 centimeters) apart.
“I hope that Newark fire department leadership is listening. This isn’t
just a failure of communication. This was a failure of leadership. That’s what this was,” NTSB chairperson Jennifer Homendy said.
Board investigators said the department’s chiefs “exposed firefighte
rs to unnecessary risk,” first responders were not familiar enough with marine firefighting and the department lacked a fire control plan for the ship.
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“Staff feels that Newark Fire Division, responding land-based firefighters should not have gone into the space,” investigator Bart Barnum said Tuesday.
The need for more training, Barnum said, was his main takeaway from the accident.
“You have to be properly trained when you respond to a marine vessel fire,” he said. “In this particular instance, if they had been, they should never have went inside.”
In a statement, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Public Safety Director Emanuel Miranda praised the bravery of the firefighters. They al
so said that every firefighter not on long-term medical leave — about 540 ou
t of 600 firefighters — was certified in “Maritime Firefighting Awareness Training.”
“The events that transpired have informed every endeavor of our entire firefighting force,” Baraka and Miranda added.
A message seeking comment was left with Ports America, the company overseeing cargo operations at the port.
The blaze ignited as the ship was being loaded with about 920 mostly used vehicles destined for West Africa. Port workers were using a Jeep Wrangler to push nonrunning vehicles into the ship when a worker heard “clunking noises” and another operator reported seeing “flaming fireballs dripping” from the Jeep, according to the board. The Jeep had pushed 37 other vehicles on board by then, investigators said.
