TACOMA, Wash. — A fire that burned aboard a ship in Tacoma for six days has been put out.
The unified command, which is made up of several local and state agencies, announced Friday that the fire aboard the F/V Kodiak Enterprise, which is owned by Trident Seafoods, is no longer burning.
The next step is removing the fuel that remains on board. Once the fuel is removed, the work will become a general salvage operation, according to the Washington state Department of Ecology.
"It's good to see that fire out," said Ty Keltner with the Washington Department of Ecology. "Fires on vessels are very tricky, especially on large vessels like this and now we can focus on mitigating the pollution risk, with the fuel that's on board."
Keltner said the ship owned by "Trident Seafoods" is still carrying 55,000 gallons of diesel which crews are planning on removing in the coming days.
"Typical fuel transfer you would hook up to the correct ports where you would extract the fuel from. In this case those were damaged in the fire,” Keltner said. “So they actually have to lower the hose into the fuel to remove it."
He said that luckily there was no sign of any fuel spills.
But Keltner and his team have still implemented preventative measures just in case.
"During the entire course of this response we've had three layers of booms, surrounding the boat, so anything that could've spilled or may have spilled is contained within that boom and on top of that we have skimmers standing by and other response vessels standing by," Keltner said.
KING 5 reached out to the United States Coast Guard but did not hear back.
It's still unclear what will happen to the vessel itself, as investigators look into what may have caused the fire.
"It's still an active incident, so we're going to wait until the emergency threat is over and then there are officials that will go on from the Coast Guard and NTSB and that will look at the cause,” Keltner said.
The Port of Tacoma’s environment and engineering departments is expected to conduct assessments of the waterway and dock where the ship is moored once they are cleared by the Tacoma Fire Department.
The fire was first reported April 8 at around 3 a.m. when a security guard noticed smoke coming from the ship. Three engineers on board were evacuated safely.
The blaze burned below deck, at one point causing an acetylene tank to explode. The pressurized tank was generally used for welding.
One complication in fighting the fire was the presence of 19,000 pounds of freon on board, which is a refrigerant. Heat from the fire could cause pressure to build in the freon tanks, according to the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). Though freon can be toxic if inhaled in a confined space or in large quantities, the freon released from the tanks into the atmosphere was not expected to be a health hazard, according to USCG.
The Environmental Protection Agency monitored air quality in the surrounding areas for days.
A shelter-in-place order was issued for the Browns Point, Dash Point and Northeast Tacoma neighborhoods from Sunday afternoon until Monday morning due to smoke emanating from the fire. Schools in the area were delayed Monday morning due to the fire.
The Hylebos Waterway was closed to commercial and recreational vehicles for several days while the fire burned.