On Monday 18 June at 3.10am, a fire broke out aboard the Australian-flagged Iron Chieftain in the Port Kembla harbour.

It was almost a week before the fire was declared out by firefighters. Owned by CSL Group Inc, the 202 metre, 50,000 tonne Iron Chieftain is a self-discharging bulk carrier. Its cargo of 34,000 tonnes of dolomite, unloaded using an on-board system of conveyor belts and a discharge boom, is used in the manufacture of steel.

The fire started aft of the ship’s cargo holds in a vertical discharge riser as dolomite was being unloaded. As a precaution, port operations were suspended from 4.00am until 11.30am and were back on schedule by 5.00pm that afternoon. The blaze had no impact on steelmaking at the nearby BlueScope Steel plant, and no port equipment was damaged.

In the fire’s early stages, carbon monoxide was discharged into the ship’s engine room to protect it, and all 22 members of the crew were evacuated without injury. Initially, Fire and Rescue New South Wales crews attacked the fire in the vertical riser and on the discharge boom and conveyor system. The fire on the main deck and discharge boom was extinguished on Monday afternoon, having been fought from the wharf using aerial appliances and from the ship’s deck with fire hoses. Tugboats applied water to the hull to keep fuel tanks cool as part of a boundary cooling strategy.

However, a difficult-to-access fire continued to burn aft of hold 5 for several days. Up to 100 firefighters were placed on an around-the-clock roster to fight the fire, with local Illawarra firefighters supported by crews from Sydney.

Firefighting efforts focused on extinguishing smouldering masses of vertical and compressed layers of rubberised hold-lining and conveyor-belt material. The leak of some five tonnes of marine fuel oil per hour into the ship’s hold was an obstacle for firefighters.

Remotely piloted aircraft provided live overhead imagery, and thermal imaging cameras were used to monitor heat levels below the main deck while firefighters continued to monitor the ship’s stability. Monitoring, recording and assessing by-products of combustion including heat, carbon monoxide levels and explosive limits were critical in establishing the effectiveness of firefighting strategies.

The hold where the fire continued to burn was successfully flooded with high expansion foam on the Wednesday morning. Once the fire was confirmed extinguished on Sunday 24 June, the ship was handed over to its owners, New South Wales Police and the Port Authority.

The state’s Environmental Protection Authority monitored environmental effects of the firefighting effort and firefighters monitored air quality. Impacts from firefighting are expected to be minimal as water and foam used to contain the fire was largely confined to the ship. Booms were placed around the ship as a precaution.

Early reports indicate that damage was caused to one hold and conveyor belts in its vicinity, a vertical riser, a discharge boom and to two tanks containing marine fuel. No structural damage to the ship was reported, nor any significant damage to its accommodation spaces. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau commenced an investigation into the incident and is expected to report by June 2019.

Due to a high volume of contaminated water remaining in the ship’s hold, an investigation to determine the cause of the fire is yet to be completed.