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Authorities continued to assess Saturday how to deal with a fire that broke out two days ago on a cargo ship that was carrying about 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries and was ordered to stay off the Alaska coast.
The US Coast Guard said the 19 crew members aboard the ship Genius Star XI were uninjured and remained seaworthy.
The exact cause of the fire is not known and investigation is ongoing. The Coast Guard was not immediately able to confirm who owns the ship or what other cargo it was carrying. The ship’s origin and destination were unavailable.
The fire broke out in the cargo hold where lithium-ion batteries, which contain highly flammable materials, were being stored.
“These are very hot, very energetic fires,” said Richard Burke, a professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the State University of New York Maritime College. Such fires can last for a long time and be difficult to extinguish, he said.
The Coast Guard ordered the ship to remain two miles off Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and officials established a one-mile safety zone around the ship for the duration of the response effort.
The fire broke out in two separate cargo holds, said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Salerno, spokesman for the 17th Coast Guard District, which covers 47,300 miles of coastline throughout Alaska and the Arctic.
Onboard fire fighting systems extinguished a fire. Commander Salerno said crew members sealed other cargo holds and were taking temperature readings, which were normal as of Saturday.
There were no signs of heat damage outside the cargo hold, and officials plan to monitor the temperature to see if it goes down.
The Coast Guard said a team of maritime firefighting experts who boarded the ship Thursday to assess its condition found no signs of structural deformity or blistering on the outside of the compartment.
Professor Burke said the fact that the ship is still intact and afloat is good news for the environment.
These ships can carry hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo, such as silk blouses, beer, laptops and other commercial goods, which can potentially pollute the ocean if the ship sinks.
“The ship also has fuel,” he said. “If you lose the ship, the fuel also goes into the sea.”
Professor Burke said that although cargo ship fires are rare, they are not unheard of.
In July, a cargo ship carrying about 3,000 cars caught fire off the Dutch island of Ameland in the North Sea, killing one crew member and injuring 22 others.
In 2022, a cargo ship carrying about 4,000 cars, including Porsches and Bentleys, caught fire 250 miles off the Azores and sank two weeks later.
