656-foot Cargo Ship Fire Put Out

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  • The fiery wreckage of a cargo ship off the Georgia coast has been extinguished.
  • According to a press release from the St. Simons Sound Incident Unified Command, as responding firefighter teams continue to monitor for additional flames.
  • The wreckage of the 656-foot Golden Ray caught fire during salvage operations on Friday and seawater was used to extinguish the blaze, according to the US Coast Guard.
A recent CNN news sources by Douglas S. Wood says that a fire on a capsized cargo ship off the Georgia coast has been extinguished using seawater.

The Golden Ray caught fire

The Golden Ray caught fire just after lunchtime during cutting operations and spread to some of the vehicles remaining on what’s left of the ship, Lopez said in an earlier news conference.

Seawater was being used to put out the fire instead of chemicals, he said, minimizing any environmental concerns.

The Coast Guard also is monitoring air quality around the vessel and has not seen anything that would cause concern, Lopez said.

Need for an assessment

An assessment will be done to see how the fire started, he said, which was located on the top decks of the ship.

Responders were conducting pre-cutting operations and actively using fire-suppression systems as a preventative measure when the fire began, Lopez said, adding that the Coast Guard anticipated fires breaking out as workers began work on cutting the wreckage.

No injuries reported

No injuries were reported, Lopez said. Nonessential crew members were evacuated from the VB-10,000, the 255-foot-tall crane vessel that does the cutting and lifting of the wreckage, Lopez said.

The cargo ship, carrying more than 4,000 vehicles, capsized on September 8, 2019, in St. Simons Sound near Jekyll Island. Four crew members trapped in the wreckage after the ship capsized were rescued.

The wreckage has remained in the water ever since then. The Coast Guard and other agencies developed a plan to remove the wreckage, which began in earnest in November 2020 after delays due to the coronavirus pandemic and last summer’s active hurricane season.

The removal plan calls for the ship to be cut into eight giant pieces with a giant diamond-cutting chain suspended from the VB-10,000.

So far, four sections have been removed, the latest being the ship’s engine section, which was removed on May 8.

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Source: CNN