An explosion on a petroleum barge docked off Staten Island on Thursday killed one man and injured two firefighters, the Fire Department said.
The man was working on the barge, named the Casablanca, during the explosion, a company with offices near the dock, Clean Water, said in a statement on Friday.
It is unclear what caused the explosion, which sparked a fire on a shipping container containing petroleum, the department said. Fire officials received the call at around 2:37 p.m. and sent 160 firefighters, emergency medical service workers and hazmat personnel to the scene, the department said.
The two firefighters sustained minor injuries. Fire units on the scene were “securing remaining petroleum,” the department said. It added that the fire had been put out on the barge and in the container. By Friday afternoon, there was no “active discharge” from the barge, said a spokesman for the Coast Guard, which is investigating the cause of the explosion.
The explosion took place in Mariner’s Harbor, along the Arthur Kill waterway on the North Shore, an important maritime and industrial route. The episode comes three months after another fire and explosion on the North Shore of Staten Island. That blaze, at a nearby shipyard, killed one and injured dozens. The Fire Department said flammable vapors were accidentally ignited in that incident.
Austin Montanti, a marine chemist who conducts safety evaluations for shipyards in New York Harbor, said that the Casablanca was used for cleaning other vessels and separating sludge from oil so it could be recycled.
According to the spokesman for the Coast Guard, the Casablanca was permanently docked near the offices of Clean Water, which recycles oil and washes barges in New York.
A barge with the name Casablanca in 2013 spilled thousands of gallons of oil in nearby Newark Bay while transferring the product from one tank to another, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It is too soon to tell what sort of environmental damage the explosion on Thursday produced, but the area is no stranger to harmful oil spills. In 1990, a ruptured pipe from an Exxon refinery leaked 567,000 gallons of home heating oil into the Arthur Kill waterway between Staten Island and New Jersey, killing about 700 birds and harming crucial wetland ecosystems. On Thursday evening, Police Department and Fire Department vehicles filled the waterfront parking lot. Neighbors on the North Shore of Staten Island described the explosion as cataclysmic.
Ernan Vega was checking his mailbox at his house on Arlington Avenue when he felt an earthquake-like explosion. He said he saw a massive cloud of dark smoke rise from the shipyard and billow above neighborhood houses with the wind.
“It was such a loud explosion, the ground shook, everything trembled,” said Mr. Vega, 69, a retired police officer.
Jason Hernandez, 18, said he was inside his house nearly two blocks away when he heard and felt the explosion. “I thought it was an earthquake,” he said.
He walked to the scene but did not stay long. “I was scared, I thought another one would happen,” he said.
Nate Schweber and Claire Fahy contributed reporting.