Officials described the ongoing firefight as an “extremely complex operation” that involved coordination with multiple local, state and federal agencies.
A fire that aboard a large cargo ship docked in New Jersey’s Port Newark was still burning Friday, and is expected to burn for several more days, officials said Friday. Two firefighters died battling the blaze, and at least six others were injured.
“At this point, the fire is gonna burn for a couple more days, probably. It’s impossible to give you any kind of definitive timeline,” Thomas Wiker, president of Gallagher Marine Systems — an incident management team hired by the ship’s owner, the Grimaldi Group — told reporters in a news conference Friday morning.
The fire broke out about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday on the tenth floor of the Grande Costa D’Avorio and then spread to two floors above. The blaze was contained to the upper decks, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Zeita Merchant, commander for sector New York, said Friday that the fire occurred while vehicles were being loaded onto the vessel.
At the time of the fire, the ship was carrying an estimated 1,200 vehicles and 157 containers aboard that were slated to be exported, the Coast Guard previously reported.
