​​​On July 5, 2023, about 2100 local time, the 692-foot-long roll-on/roll-off container (Ro/Con) vessel Grande Costa D’Avorio was docked at Port Newark, New Jersey, when a pusher vehicle (a passenger vehicle, owned by the cargo loading company and retrofitted with a steel front bumper), operated by shoreside workers who were loading used vehicles onto the vessel’s garage decks, caught fire in an interior garage deck. 

Vessel crewmembers attempted to put out the fire using portable fire extinguishers but were unsuccessful. The captain ordered the vessel’s fixed gas (carbon dioxide [CO2]) fire extinguishing system to be activated. The crew attempted to seal the garage decks where the CO2 had been released to allow the CO2 to smother the fire, but they were unable to close a large rampway door that was controlled from a single panel inside the garage where the fire was located. Land-based firefighters arrived on scene. While attempting to put out the fire, two of the land-based firefighters likely became disoriented, unable to find their way out, and were lost in one of the smoke-filled garage decks and died. Six additional emergency responders were injured during the firefighting and rescue operations. The damage to the vessel was estimated to be over $23 million.​

Read Board Meeting Summary​​

​​We determined that the probable cause of the fire aboard the roll-on/roll-off container vessel Grande Costa D’Avorio was Ports America’s use of a passenger vehicle as a pusher vehicle in an industrial application for which it was not intended, which led to the vehicle’s transmission fluid overheating, boiling over, and igniting on a hot engine surface. 

Contributing to the fire’s duration and severity was the absence of operating controls on the outside of one of the vessel’s fire boundary garage doors, which prevented the crew from safely closing the door and directly led to the ineffectiveness of the fixed gas fire extinguishing system.

Also contributing to the severity of the fire was the Newark Fire Division’s lack of marine vessel firefighting training, which resulted in an ineffective response and led to the firefighter casualties.          

​​As a result of this investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board will make the new safety recommendations to:

• US Coast Guard,
  
• the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
• ​the Newark Fire Division,
  
• ​the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
  
• RINA Services,
• ​the American Association of Port Authorities,
• ​the International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the National Volunteer Fire Council,
  
• ​Grimaldi Deep Sea, and
  
• ​Ports America and American Maritime Services