Sixteen people, including firefighters, have been injured in a fire and subsequent explosion on a barge at a Staten Island shipyard in New York City.
Two firefighters and one civilian suffered serious injuries and were rushed to nearby hospitals, the New York City Fire Department said on Friday.
Eleven other firefighters and two emergency services personnel were also hurt in the incident.
It began with a report of workers trapped and a fire around 15:30 local time (20:30 BST). An explosion erupted roughly 50 minutes later, prompting additional emergency responders to deploy to the scene.
Two workers were reportedly trapped in a confined space as the fire was spreading, Joanne Mariano with the fire department’s press office said, according to the Associated Press.
When firefighters arrived, they located a fire in the basement of a metal structure at the dock.
It is not clear yet what caused the fire and explosion.
Officials told US media that people in the area should expect traffic delays and road closures.
Most shipyards have trained personnel IE a fire brigade that would act as first responders.
Large yards in California which have been my exposer have personnel that walk the facility as their job looking for hazards.
Brigades which are made up of shipyard staff would be more familiar with the location and may have had some knowledge of what was in the building that exploded. It seems this yard waited for the fire department to show up.
also confined space entry rears its ugly head again
The articles I saw said it was the building, do you have something more up to date? Just curious. It’s very mildly interesting that nothing I’ve seen so far names the yard, which is of course May Ship.
Yeah I saw “basement of a metal building” then I saw a helo pic of a small dry dock that looked like it was sitting on blocks. I’m sure there will be details to come, naturally.
The vessel owner has a bailment when the vessel goes into the shipyard Care, Custody and Control is the responsibility of the shipyard.
So it doesn’t really matter who owns the barge from a responsibility standpoint. the yard messed up and they killed those people
other questions on this site regarding that it was a building. if it had hazardous material in it the outside walls should have been placarded and MDSS material data safety sheets should have been available
someone on this site in the new york area should be able to tell us which yard it was. maritime community is quite small, and the underground intelligent pipeline is often quite accurate
This occurred in their “new construction” area. I believe it is a new construction dry dock, or at least a segment of one. It has valve handles on top.
I sincerely hope they weren’t painting and welding at the same time, but unfortunately that’s my best guess.
The reason for all the media confusion, I believe, is that the FDNY radio chatter doesn’t have codes for a dry dock or barge. They call everything a “structure” and the double bottoms a “basement.” You’d think a reporter would take 2 minutes to educate themselves but that’s too much to ask of today’s batch…
