Kirby Tug Crew awakened by FDNY firefighters

Kirby Tug Crew Awakened by New York City Firefighters

A Kirby Offshore Marine tugboat caught fire just after midnight last night while moored at their dock on the north shore of Staten Island.
According to local news reports, six crewmembers were asleep on board the tug “Viking” while a fire was burning on deck.

“They were all sleeping — we woke them up and got them off the boat,” FDNY Battalion Chief William Tanzosh told SILive.com from the scene.
In an emailed statement, Kirby Offshore Marine commented on the incident:

The company is thankful for the actions of the port and local fire officials in extinguishing a small fire on the tug Viking, which had been at dock undergoing repairs earlier in the day. Work on the vessel had been suspended overnight and the crewmembers onboard at the time the incident safely evacuated the vessel. No injuries were sustained and damage appears to be very minor.

We are working with the Coast Guard to determine the cause of this incident as it remains under investigation.

you know that most vessels burn while in a shipyard and I have always kept one crewmember on at night just to not have something like this happen.

Besides if there was a generator running it is always a good idea to have someone watching that as well.

Of course, very glad to learn that nobody was hurt by this.

I always keep someone up at night if we have a genset online. If We’re on shore power, it’s all bets off. We don’t always have enough guys on board in shipyard to handle the day work with someone set aside for fire watch. Unless, of course, he’s a worthless MF. Luckily, we don’t have too many of those.

Heard about quite a few incidents over there @ Kirby-Sea that make you shake your head. They didnt have a huge mass exodus for just any reason. Good no one was hurt, but the SOP is to still conduct rounds even in the yard. Got the biggest laugh when kirby publicly acknowledged they didnt do their homework about the vessels before they bought them, who did they send, because you could tell sitting across from them at the dock half the stuff was garbage.

I wonder who called it in.

And didn’t wake the crew

If we are on shore power,( Most of the time the boats having major repairs), We work all day , sleep at night of course. all fire detection systems are on line. Theres no fire detection on deck that Ive seen. If we have gen running , there will be enough ppl on board to do watches.When Ive been to a shipyard. the shipyard guys go home , I walk around the vessel, Ive had 2 different fires in 2 shipyards , Nothing major ,but stuff to learn on. I’m glad no was hurt ,It could have been worst for sure.

The way I heard it told was that they paid $600 million for maybe $100-$200 million worth of equipment.

Listen to all the finger wagging nanny captains! Hypocrites. This could have happened to anyone of you at some point in your perfect careers. As for Kirby buying junk, well its mostly true but it was always about buying up market share and it looks like they have the biggest dick in the game now. Besides, I hear the new management is pretty decent to the crews.

I was on a molten sulfur ship in Port Arthur in the yard undergoing normal repairs. We had a fire start in the steering gear after the shipyard men cutting and burning knocked off for the night. If the second engineer didn’t make his fire round after 5 pm ( We made a good round of all spaces before we went ashore for supper at 1730), we would have had a similar situation. I always had a fire watch stay for at least a 1/2 hour after the hot work was finished. Kirby treats it’s engineers like trash. I was treated ok by them but the people I relieved told me some good stories.

One chief told me when he ordered drier parts for a clothes drier the port engineer told him “Why can’t you hang up your clothes and air dry them?”. The engineer bought the part himself and the cheapskate port engineer reluctantly reimbursed the chief .