NTSB Slams Newark, NJ, for Training Failures in Deaths of Firefighters at Ship Fire

The National Transportation Safety Board blasted Newark fire officials Tuesday for their response to the July 2023 shipboard fire at Port Newark that killed two of their own in a tragedy it said had been avoidable.

In a nearly four-hour hearing, the board harshly criticized the city’s fire division and the city itself not only for its failure to properly train firefighters, but doing little since the fire to prepare for the next big disaster at the largest port on the East Coast.

“They didn’t have training before and apparently have had substandard training since, which to me is unbelievable,” said Jennifer L. Homendy, who chairs the NTSB.

At the same time, the board found fault with the company that had been loading the car-carrying cargo vessel with a jury-rigged Jeep Wrangler, which erupted in flames as it was being used to push non-running vehicles on board the Italian-flagged Grande Costa d’Avorio for shipment to West Africa.

The board hearing in Washington came after a nearly two-year investigation into the fatal fire that killed firefighters Augusto “Augie” Acabou, 45, and Wayne “Bear” Brooks Jr., 49, who became disoriented when they entered an enclosed compartment on the 692-foot “roll-on/roll-off” freighter in an effort to isolate the fire.

Acabou and Brooks died when they ran out of air, one entrapped by the lashings of the vehicles in the huge cargo hold; the other lost in a dark and smoky maze of tightly parked cars and trucks in a far end of the compartment.

Bart Barnum, the lead investigator for the NTSB, said neither man should have been there.

“You have to be properly trained when you respond to marine fires,” he told the board. “If they had been, they never would have gone inside.”

The families of two firefighters who perished have filed a $50 million wrongful death complaint in federal court that charges that negligence, carelessness and recklessness on the part of the city, the owners of the ship, and others led to the untimely deaths of the men.

The still pending lawsuit alleges that Newark failed to properly train and equip the firefighters to deal with the dangerous conditions they faced aboard the Grande Costa d’Avorio. It also alleged its owners, Grimaldi Deep Sea of Naples, Italy, operated the ship in an “unreasonably dangerous and unseaworthy condition.”

Both families were present as the board discussed its findings of probable cause.

Read the board’s findings

The NTSB conclusions echoed a 2023 investigation by NJ Advance Media that raised questions about the fire department’s actions the night of the fire and its ability to handle a major emergency on the waterfront.

Those stories, based on interviews with firefighters and marine fire experts, public records, court filings, hours of radio traffic, and harrowing internal incident reports, found that firefighters were sent deep into the ship the night of the incident, rather than simply containing the fire, cooling it down, and suppressing it, as response teams would later do.

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The fire at Port Newark began after a 16-year-old Jeep Wrangler struggling to push a non-running 2010 Toyota Venza on board erupted in flames on Deck 10 of the ship, according to the board’s findings of probable cause.

The NTSB staff attributed the fire to the use of heavily modified vehicles by Ports America, which oversaw cargo operations, to push non-running cars on board the ship.

Those pusher vehicles had been operated in ways that were well beyond their design limitations, according to Nancy McAtee, a fire and explosion specialist for the NTSB. The 2008 Jeep Wrangler had already pushed 37 non-operating vehicles on board when the fire broke out under its hood.

The longshoreman behind the wheel of the Jeep testified during hearings conducted by the NTSB and U.S. Coast Guard that he heard a loud clunk, describing the sound like a wrench being dropped to the floor. Then he saw what looked like “flaming fireballs dripping from the bottom of the vehicle.”

McAtee said it was believed the fire was caused when overheated transmission fluid ignited on a hot engine surface.

The use of the Jeep, designed as a passenger vehicle, violated federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, the board found.

“It was doing something it wasn’t designed to do,” said NTSB board member Michael Graham.

Such vehicles are no longer being used at Port Newark or by Ports America, NTSB officials said.

In addition, the board found that while the ship’s mechanical equipment and electrical systems did not cause the fire, the absence of operating controls outside the cargo area to close a hydraulic garage door leading to Deck 12 prevented the crew from safely closing the door. That resulted in the inability of the carbon dioxide extinguishing system to snuff out the fire.

But it was what happened afterward that led to the board’s especially harsh criticism of the Newark Fire Division’s response, and what the city has done in the aftermath of the tragedy.

“The fire department was unprepared,” concluded Barnum, who said firefighters should never have gone down into the ship. The best strategy, he said, would have been to seal off the cargo hold and let the ship’s CO2 fire suppression system do its job — even with the failure of one gaping watertight door that could not be properly closed to starve the fire of oxygen. Let the CO2 system extinguish the fire, he explained.

“No one would have gone into the space and no one would have died,” Barnum told the board.

Asked if he had been surprised at the lack of training, in Newark, Barnum said he had initially assumed that the Port of Newark would have “a robust firefighting response.”

But in the wake of the NTSB investigation, he said he was no longer surprised by what they found.

“We’ve seen it happen over and over again,” he said.

Homendy also questioned whether fire officials knew that the ship’s crew of 28 had been evacuated when the decision was made to enter the compartment where the fire had started.

Barnum confirmed, “Yes.”

“Why did they go in then?” she asked.

“That is the question,” he said.

“Do you believe they should have?”

“No,” he said once again.

As to what the Newark Fire Division has done since, the investigator said all firefighters were sent to a marine firefighting awareness class put on by an outside party, describing it as “basically a four-hour classroom PowerPoint session with no actual on-site training or shipboard familiarization.

“You know, I’m going to hammer the Newark Fire Department,” Homendy said. “That’s not enough for your personnel. You’re going to end up with another tragedy on your hands.”

She added that she hoped Newark fire department top brass was listening.

“This isn’t just a failure of communication. This was a failure of leadership. That’s what this was,” Homendy said.

Newark officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.