What happened?
A container fire at sea forced a ship to seek help at the nearest port. The ships' crew tried to put out the fire immediately but it had spread to two other containers and damaged the ship's structures and other nearby containers. The containers that caught fire were transhipment cargoes that had left the origin country about 7 days before. The content of the container was activated carbon powder (Charcoal Dust), a Class 4.2 cargo of the IMDG dangerous goods (DG).
The fire alarm on board rang and smoke could be seen at the forward area of the container ship. Crew was mustered and the emergency teams readied. Fire was seen on the hatch cover No. 2 (Bay 14). The emergency teams tried to fight the fire by applying boundary cooling but the fire continued. As the ship arrived at the nearest port, assistance from the shore was sought and the fire was finally extinguished after almost 36 hours since it started.
Why did it happen?
The probable cause of the fire was the self-heating nature of charcoal dust, which was held in the container that caught fire. Investigations tracking back to the shipper had revealed that the cargo was not tested for self-heating, a requirement for cargo of its DG Class. The shipper had passed off a quality certificate as a self-heating test certificate so as to invoke Special Provision 925 of the IMDG Code. The shipper had spuriously declared the cargo and endangered the ship.
- The causal factor was the self-heating nature of the cargo. This was likely due to fraudulent declaration of a DG Class cargo.
- Shipper had declared the cargo as non-DG by producing a quality certificate and passing it off as a self-heating test certificate.
- The requirement for cross checking the cargo of carbon/charcoal needs to be improved. A Shipper/Carrier accountability flow-chart below can be used to improve the system.
