On January 8, a late night fire on board a containership at Port Houston claimed the lives of two crew members, while a third sustained injuries that required hospitalization.
The fire broke out on the Panama-flagged M/V Stride as it was docked at Port Houston’s Barbours Cut Container Terminal, one of eight public facilities sited along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel.
The Baytown Fire Department and the Port Houston Fire Department responded to the incident. The fire was extinguished quickly and there was no threat to the terminal or the surrounding community, according to port officials, who added that there was restricted vessel movement in the area, but that there was no impact to Port Houston operations.
Initially, the Harris County fire marshal and medical examiners were dispatched to the scene. They were soon joined by U.S. Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board personnel and an official federal investigation of the fire and its cause is currently underway.
The 2,174-TEU, 597-foot M/V Stride was built in 1997 and had docked at the terminal the previous day.
The ship is owned by Greece-based Danaos and, in June 2021, was chartered to OSCO Shipping Lines, which operates a joint operation with CMA CGM connecting Houston with Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia.
According to the 2023 Allianz Safety and Shipping Review, there have been 64 reported shipboard fires over the past five years alone.
For example, six days before the fire aboard the M/V Stride, the Panama-flagged containership Genius Star XI was ordered to anchor off Dutch Harbor, Ak., after a fire fueled by a cargo of lithium-ion batteries broke out in one of its cargo holds.
Last July, one crew member was killed and 22 others were injured in a fire aboard the auto carrier Fremantle Highway, when the ship, loaded with nearly 3,000 vehicles, was transiting the North Sea, about 18 miles off the Dutch island of Ameland.
The Fremantle Highway fire occurred just weeks after two firefighters were killed at Port Newark, N.J., in a fire aboard Grande Costa d’Avorio, an Italian-flag roll-on/roll-off ship carrying more than 1,200 vehicles.
The difficulty in fighting and finally knocking down that fire, which eventually burned for five days, led to speculation that some of the cars aboard the ship were electric vehicles fitted with lithium ion batteries. •