A Jan. 12 fire on a barge carrying junk cars and scrap metal forced a temporary traffic closure in the Mobile Shipping Channel south of the Africatown Bridge, the Coast Guard said.
Coast Guard Sector Mobile responded to the first fire report and closed the channel between mile markers 2 and 4. A Coast Guard incident management team, the Gulf Strike Team, and the Coast Guard cutter Stingray were on scene, along with Mobile Fire and Rescue.
The barge was not in transit at the time of the fire. Video broadcast by Fox10 News in Mobile showed a towboat pushing the barge as a fire boat sprayed a burning heap on the vessel.
Scrap metal cargo is usually classed as nonhazardous and posing low fire risk. But in recent years some high-profile incidents, including spate of three major fires within weeks in 2018, have focused attention on scrap vehicles, with the growing use of lithium batteries.
In January 2022, a shoreside pile caught fire in Newark, N.J. Two international vessels carrying scrap material experienced cargo fires in 2022 and in 2017 the Japan Transport Safety Board investigated a scrap metal fire in a vessel’s cargo hold in Fukuoka City, Japan.
In May 2022 the towing vessel Daisy Mae was pulling a loaded scrap metal barge northbound in Delaware Bay when fire was discovered on board. The fire burned for 26 hours before it was extinguished by responding fire boats.
Following that incident the National Transportation Safety Board reported that lithium-ion batteries and other possible ignition sources could pose a fire safety issue in the transportation of scrap materials as cargo.
