The lack of training and familiarity of the Newark Fire Department with Marine Firefighting during a deadly cargo ship on the largest port of the east coast in July 2023 was “failure to lead”, said the head of the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday.
The board met publicly in Washington to reveal his findings about the inferno in Italian Grande Costa d'Avorio, which smoldered for almost a week and led to the death of two Newark fire brigade.
The board not only emphasized the Newark fire brigade for criticism, but also found that the fire ignited as a loader used a jeep that was not designed for such work to position vehicles. It also found that a carbon dioxide fire suppression system was ineffective because a large hydraulic door had to be closed so that it could function correctly and could only be closed from the inside, where the fire raged under cramped conditions, with vehicles as close as 4 inches (10 centimeters).
“I hope that the leadership of the Newark Fire Department will listen. This is not just a failure of communication. This was a failure of the lead. That was,” said NTSB, Jennifer Homendy.
The investigators of the board data said that the bosses of the department “firefighters exposed to unnecessary risk” were not familiar with marine firefighting, and the department lacked a fire protection plan.
“The employees believe that the Newark Fire Division and the reacting firefighters should not go into the room on land,” said investigator Bart Barnum on Tuesday.
The need for more training, said Barnum, was his main bullet out of the accident.
“You must be properly trained if you react to a fire ship,” he said. “In this special case, they should never have gone in.”
In a statement, the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, and the director of public security, Emanuel Miranda, praised the bravery of the firefighters. They also said that every firefighter who was not certified in a long-term medical vacation eTwa 540 out of 600 firefighters-in “Maritime fire fighting awareness training”.
“The events that were going on have influenced every effort of our entire fire brigade,” added Baraka and Miranda.
A message that applied for a comment with the Ports America that was the company that supervises the freight farm at the harbor.
The fire inflamed when the ship was loaded with around 920 mainly for West Africa. The port workers used a jeep wrangler to push vehicles into the ship when a worker heard “smoke noises”, and another operator reported “flaming fire balls that dripped out of the jeep”. Until then, the jeep had pushed 37 other vehicles on board, the investigators said.
The federal rules require that every vehicle with which other vehicles are used on a ship standards for such work are used. The jeep has not fulfilled this standard standard for security and health administration and was striving beyond its capacity, said the investigators of the board of directors.
“Maybe it was a slightly available vehicle,” said an investigator on Tuesday. “Perhaps you have overlooked the Osha requirements that you could not use in this way – just speculated.”
The fire started with deck 10 of the 12-deck ship, the investigators said, and the ship crew had activated the carbon dioxide suppression system, but the ship's outer doors had to be closed in order to work effectively. Since the door on the upper deck could only be closed from the ship, it remained open according to the presentation of the board.
Newark firefighters answered quickly – and run in the ship, said the board when dark smoke turned into the sky.
“We cannot find our way out,” said the board, a firefighter. “We are lost.”
Newark Firefighters Augusto “Augie” Acabou and Wayne “Bear” Brooks Jr. were killed. Fire fighting boats blew up the ship on the ship for days to extinguish the fire.
Board members found that relatives of the fallen firefighters were present at the meeting and express them to them.
The port authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Newark's port, is based on local fire brigades to help with fires because it has no own fire brigade authority.
The authorities previously rejected whether firefighters should have helped in Harm's way in order to make fire when there was no life at risk, with the 28 crew members of the ship secure and taken into account. Fritz Question, who was then Newark's public security director at the time, said the city and the port authority continued to have discussions about training. He did not offer any details.
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