The Newark fire department’s lack of training and familiarity with marine firefighting during a deadly cargo ship fire at the East Coast’s largest port in July 2023 amounted to a “failure of leadership,” the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.
The board met publicly in Washington to unveil its findings about the inferno inside the Italian-flagged Grande Costa D’Avorio, which smoldered for nearly a week and resulted in the deaths of two Newark firefighters.
In addition to singling out Newark’s fire department for criticism, the board also found that the fire ignited when cargo loaders used a Jeep that wasn’t designed for such work to push vehicles into position. It also found that a carbon dioxide fire suppression system was ineffective because a garage door had to be closed for it to operate correctly, and could only be shut from inside, where the fire was raging in cramped conditions, with vehicles parked as narrowly as 4 inches (10 centimeters) apart….