Fire Service News

Preservation efforts are underway to renovate an 85-year old vessel known as “America’s Fireboat”.Designed by noted naval architect William Francis Gibbs and built in 1938 at United Shipyards on Staten Island, the vessel Fire Fighter would go on to serve a long and storied career before being decommissioned and eventually transferred to The Fireboat Fire Fighter Museum in 2013.The iconic fireboat is undergoing extensive renovations to return the vessel to her original glory, the museum announced this week. Escorted by the U.S.

On Tuesday, December 6, 2022, the firefighting vessel Strażak-28 was ceremoniously christened in Szczecin, hoisting the Polish flag. The vessel joined the fleet of the Szczecin and Swinoujscie Seaports Authority SA.The event was attended, among others, by Grzegorz Witkowski – Deputy Minister of Infrastructure, Zbigniew Bogucki – West Pomeranian Governor; Wojciech Zdanowicz – Director of the Maritime Office in Szczecin, Dariusz Jaguszewski – Member of the Management Board of Remontowa Shipbuilding SA…

Police in Bangladesh on Wednesday opened an investigation into eight officials from a shipping container depot after a blaze killed at least 44 people, including 10 firefighters, and injured around 200 others, officials said.Firefighters put out the blaze at the depot in Sitakunda, 40 km (25 miles) from the southeastern port city of Chittagong, on Wednesday, four days after it began late on Saturday, triggering a series of explosions.The investigation was opened into officials who were directly involved operating the depot on suspicion of negligence and mismanagement…

Firefighters in Bangladesh brought a blaze at a container depot under control on Tuesday, three days after fiery explosions killed at least 43 people at a facility that a senior fire service official suspected had not followed safety guidelines.Drone footage showed smoke and rows of burnt-out containers from the fire that began late on Saturday, triggering blasts and blazes at Sitakunda, 40 km (25 miles) from the southeastern port city of Chittagong. Authorities have not determined…

Firefighters battled for a third day on Monday to control a huge fire that killed dozens when it triggered explosions at a Bangladesh container depot, as officials warned of the risk of further blasts if the flames spread to chemicals stored nearby.Drone footage from the BM Container Depot at Sitakunda, 40 km (25 miles) from the southeastern port city of Chittagong, showed thick columns of smoke still rising from burnt-out containers some 46 hours after the blaze broke out.With the country's poor record on industrial accidents under the spotlight…

The Netherlands-based Damen Shipyards Group said it handed over twin fireboats to Flotte Hamburg, a subsidiary of the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) tasked with implementing low-emission shipping in the city.With 315 kWh of battery capacity, the state-of-the-art, plug-in hybrid vessels are capable of extended, fully-electric, emissions-free operations in and around the Port of Hamburg. Prag will be operated by Hamburg’s fire service while Dresden will support the HPA, the fire service and other third parties.The vessels, classed as Damen Fire-Fighting Vessels 3508, are completely new designs.

Califronia-based boat builder Moose Boats said it has hired Ken Royal as vice president of sales.Royal has extensive experience operating Moose Boats as a firefighter with the Tiburon Fire Protection District, and training other operators on Moose Boats, and will bring these skills and knowledge to help grow the Moose Boats brand. “Having logged over 15 years serving his district aboard two Moose Boats catamarans, we find his expertise in real world applications to be of great value to both current and prospective Moose Boats clients” said Stephen Dirkes…

A hybrid-electric tour vessel caught fire off Norway's southern coast on Thursday, and while the flames have been extinguished, local authorities fear the situation could deteriorate in the days ahead.Authorities said the fire broke out in or near starboard battery compartment and engine room aboard the 24-meter catamaran MS Brim, operated by Brim Explorer, on Thursday afternoon, while the vessel was west of the island Nordre Søster off Fredrikstad in Østfold. There were no passengers on board…

Two Maltese maritime training and contingency management training organizations will be offering a new set of integrated courses from 2021 after agreeing a memorandum of understanding earlier this month.The Mediterranean Maritime Research and Training Center (MaritimeMT) and the International Safety Training College (ISTC) will create a new set of courses covering both maritime training and the oil and gas sectors offering some of the highest training standards in these industry sectors from January 2021.MaritimeMT…

The fire in the engine room of the crude oil tanker Dubai Harmony moored at Equinor’s Sture terminal in Øygarden municipality on the west coast of Norway near Bergen has now been extinguished.At 1102 this morning, Equinor's alarm center received reports of a fire in the engine room on board Dubai Harmony, which was loading at the quay at the Sture terminal.The fire has now been extinguished and the fire service is continuing to cool the area where the fire took place.The 102 people who were at the Sture terminal were evacuated from the terminal when the incident occurred as a precaution, while only personnel with emergency tasks remained…

A fire onboard an oil tanker at Norway's Sture crude export terminal has been put out, the fire service told Reuters on Friday.The fire broke out in the engine room of the Dubai Harmony tanker during loading at the Equinor oil terminal on Norway's west coast, according to rescue services and police.No one was injured, and the terminal's output was not affected by the incident, although there was a partial evacuation of staff."The head of the response team on the site confirms that the fire was put out at 1257 CET (1057 GMT)…

A serious water pollution incident occurred on Saturday 23 June 2018 in the Derde Petroleumhaven in the Botlek area of the Port of Rotterdam. A large amount of heavy fuel oil spilled into the water. The Port of Rotterdam Authority and the emergency services installed oil booms around the vessel as quickly as possible to prevent the further spread of the oil. The installation of the oil booms was successful but some of the oil had already spread beyond the incident area. On Sunday 24 June 2018 a considerable spread of traces of oil was observed on the water from Hoek van Holland to Spijkenisse bridge and to the Benelux tunnel. Most of the oil is in the Derde Petroleumhaven. Experts are expecting the clean-up operation to take days if not weeks, or possibly even longer.

Almost 200 passengers and crew on a cruise along the Danube river had to be evacuated from their vessel on Monday when a blaze broke out on board, the Austrian fire service said. The passengers, who were on a trip with German river-cruise line A-Rosa from Linz to Budapest, were taken off and moved to a nearby ship after the blaze started close to the village of Schoenbuehel-Aggsbach in Lower Austria, a fire brigade spokesman said. No-one was hurt. Twelve fire trucks and several boats with around 150 fire fighters fought the blaze before bringing it under control after two hours. Five ship crew members who tried to extinguish the fire were treated for smoke inhalation in hospital, a spokesman for the Red Cross said.

W.S. Darley & Co. informs it has purchased the assets of Fireboy, Xintex and Aetna Engineering based in Grand Rapids, Mich., forming the new company Fireboy-Xintex, LLC. W.S. Darley & Co., headquartered in Itasca, Ill., has served the world’s fire and emergency services industry since 1908. The company has manufacturing, engineering and research and development operations are in Chippewa Falls, Wisc. and Janesville, Iowa. Founded in 1973, Fireboy is a developer of marine pre-engineered and custom engineered fire safety and suppression equipment.

An eight-day training course on the latest tools, processes and procedures in the investigation of marine incidents is taking place in Victoria, Seychelles (7-15 November). The course will focus in particular on how to carry out such investigations in accordance with the mandatory  International Maritime Organization (IMO)  Casualty Investigation Code. William Azuh of the Technical Cooperation Division and Ms Purity Thirimu of IMO Regional Presence Office, Nairobi, are coordinating the training course. Twenty five participants are drawn from the Seychelles Marine Accident Investigation Board, Department of Transport, Seychelles Maritime Safety Administration…

Italian emergency workers have recovered 217 bodies from the wreck of a boat that sank in the Mediterranean in April 2015, killing some 500 migrants, the Navy said on Thursday. The sinking was one of the worst known disasters involving migrants trying to reach Europe by sea. Thousands of people a year, many of them fleeing war in the Middle East, have crossed the Mediterranean in unseaworthy or overcrowded boats. In 2015, at least 3,770 people are thought to have died on Mediterranean routes, mostly by drowning when their boats capsized. The vessel was hauled off the seabed and taken to a naval site in southeastern Sicily last week. Its sinking about 135 km (85 miles) north of Libya, from where it departed, jolted the European Union into stepping up Mediterranean rescue efforts.

When the Port of Toronto’s 45-year-old single screw tug, William Rest, got some hull damage while breaking ice, the incident lent new impetus to plans for a new boat. Like the original, the new boat would do a variety of tasks from tending to dredging, and icebreaking as well as assisting the Toronto Police and Toronto Fire Service marine units. Ports Toronto issued a call for tenders with a budget and set of requirements. Well know Ontario-based builder Hike Metals, approached the Vancouver-based naval architect firm of Robert Allan Ltd for a design. It was this design that helped Hike win the bid. It was specified that this boat, like its predecessor, should have a single engine. While the older boat was not designed to break ice, the new one will have ice-breaking capabilities.

Marine safety equipment leader VIKING Life-Saving Equipment will appear in force at Nor-Shipping 2015, displaying both innovative products and services that are proving popular with shipowners around the world. Few innovations in the safety equipment servicing arena have caught on as strongly as VIKING’s Shipowner Agreements. Based on the concept of fixed prices and centralized, single-source servicing for multi-brand safety equipment, these agreements have been rapidly adopted by forward-thinking shipowners across the globe. VIKING’s stand at Nor-Shipping will be manned by experts ready to discuss the options available and explain the popularity of this type of servicing contract.

At Maasvlakte in the Port of Rotterdam, Falck has started work on a the first Northwest European training facility for disaster prevention involving Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The Port of Rotterdam Authority and the joint fire service in the port area are closely involved in the development of this training facility. From September 2014, fire crews, employees and members of company emergency response teams in the chemical and petrochemical industry, the road haulage and water transport sector and storage and stevedoring companies will be able to practise and train in a realistic environment to combat disasters involving LNG. LNG is on the way to becoming the fuel for road transport and shipping. It is in keeping with European policy for cleaner fuels.

Eleven crew of a Chinese cargo ship are missing following a collision with a large container ship in the waters off Hong Kong on Monday, authorities said. Hong Kong is one of the world's busiest shipping channels, although serious accidents are rare. The cargo ship Zhong Xing 2 sank after the collision with the 300-m- (984-ft-) long Marshall Islands-registered MOL Motivator about two nautical miles southwest of Po Toi Island, a spokeswoman of the Hong Kong Maritime Department said. "Zhong Xing 2 is suspected to have sunk after the collision, and it is reported there are 12 crew onboard," said the spokeswoman, who declined to be identified in line with department policy. "One of them was picked up by a fishing vessel navigating close by," she added.

Liebherr mobiles cranes which comply with stage 3b or over now come with a rescue sheet as standard. This shows the structure of the crane and any hazardous substances on it. It is a tool to provide valuable help to fire service and recovery personnel for rescuing personnel and recovering the mobile crane after an accident. The rescue sheet is located behind the driver's seat. Rescue sheets have been available for new cars for some time now. Rescue sheets are now also available for lots of commercial vehicles and trucks. Modern automotive engineering is safer but also hampers the fast rescue of passengers. The rescue sheet is an information sheet which provides details of the vehicle's structure and the best places to cut the bodywork open.

A boy and girl trapped in a sinking South Korean ferry with hundreds of other high school students tied their life jacket cords together, a diver who recovered their bodies said, presumably so they wouldn't float apart. The diver had to separate the two because he could not carry two corpses up to the surface at the same time. "I started to cry thinking that they didn't want to leave each other," he told the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper on the island of Jindo on Thursday, near where the overloaded ferry went down last week. The parents of the boy whose shaking voice first raised the alarm that an overloaded ferry was sinking believe his body has also been found, the coastguard said.

The frightened boy who first raised the alarm that a South Korean ferry with hundreds on board was sinking did not have time to call his parents, his father said, and was found dead not wearing a life jacket. Choi called the emergency 119 number which put him through to the fire service, which in turn forwarded him to the coastguard two minutes later. That was followed by about 20 other calls from children to the emergency number, a fire service officer told Reuters. The Sewol ferry sank on April 16 on a routine trip south from the port of Incheon to the traditional holiday island of Jeju. More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from one high school on a field trip, have died or are missing and presumed dead.