Source: The New York Times
One person was killed and two firefighters were injured after a petroleum barge exploded while docked off Staten Island in New York City on Thursday, the Fire Department said.
The cause of the explosion remains unclear. The blast triggered a fire on a shipping container carrying petroleum, the department said, The New York Times reported.
Fire officials received the call at around 2:37 p.m. and dispatched 160 firefighters, emergency medical service workers and hazmat personnel to the scene.
The two firefighters suffered minor injuries. Fire units at the scene were “securing remaining petroleum,” the department said. It added that the fire had been extinguished both on the barge and inside the container.
The explosion occurred in Mariner’s Harbor along the Arthur Kill waterway on Staten Island’s North Shore, an important maritime and industrial route.
The incident came three months after another fire and explosion on the North Shore of Staten Island. That blaze, which occurred at a nearby shipyard, killed one person 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 the explosion occurred aboard a barge named the Casablanca. According to Montanti, the barge was used to clean other vessels and to separate sludge from oil so that it could be recycled.
He said the Coast Guard was investigating the cause of the explosion.
The barge was docked near the offices of Clean Water, a company that recycles oil and washes barges in New York, and Kirby Offshore Marine, a barge operator. Clean Water and Kirby did not respond to requests for comment.
A barge named Casablanca spilled thousands of gallons of oil in nearby Newark Bay in 2013 while transferring the product from one tank to another, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It is too early to determine what kind of environmental damage Thursday’s explosion caused, but the area has previously experienced harmful oil spills. In 1990, a ruptured pipe at an Exxon refinery leaked 567,000 gallons of home heating oil into the Arthur Kill waterway between Staten Island and New Jersey. The spill killed about 700 birds and damaged critical wetland ecosystems.
On Thursday evening, Police Department and Fire Department vehicles filled the waterfront parking lot. Residents of Staten Island’s North Shore described the explosion as cataclysmic.
Ernan Vega was checking his mailbox at his home 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 over neighborhood houses as the wind carried it.
“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 home 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 for long.
“I was scared, I thought another one would happen,” he said.