NTSB Releases Report on Fatal Fire in 2024 aboard U.S.-Flagged Dredger

 

The fatal engine room fire aboard the dredger Stuyvesant in November 2024 that killed the vessel’s first engineer is the subject of a new report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It finds that the lack of adequate checks after a routine maintenance procedure failed to detect a missing cap that contributed to the lube oil leak that started the fire.

The U.S.-flagged dredging vessel Stuyvesant was performing dredging tasks on the St. Johns River near Jacksonville, Florida, for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Midday on November 2, 2024, while the vessel was in a break period, the chief engineer instructed that the crew perform routine maintenance on the port auxiliary engine. While the ship was built in 1982, the auxiliary engines had been replaced in December 2022 when the previous ones reached the end of their service life.

The auxiliary engine was offline because the vessel required less power during the break from dredging. The task involved draining and replacing the lube oil and the filters for the engine. It was a routine task, which the crew believed was completed satisfactorily.

The first engineer and an oiler returned to the machinery control room (MCR) and, after informing the wheelhouse that the task was complete, they performed a remote restart. Less than a minute after the engine was started, the first engineer and oiler saw flames in the engine room. Moments later, a crewmember working on deck also saw smoke coming from the engine room and informed the bridge.

The oiler later told the NTSB that the first engineer had opened the portside MCR door, letting the flames from the engine room enter the space. The first engineer grabbed a fire extinguisher, but the oiler observed that within a minute, the engine room had gone dark with smoke, and he was unable to breathe. He was able to escape through an emergency trunk, but then they discovered the first engineer was still in the space.

The shipboard emergency squad was able to locate and extract the first engineer from the MCR, but he was not responsive when they got him to the deck. The crew administered CPR till the local fire and rescue squad reached the ship, and they evacuated the first engineer to a hospital.  He was later transferred to a second hospital, where he was declared deceased.

The vessel sustained an estimated $18 million in damages. The NTSB reports that approximately 300 electrical cables and signal cables in the engine room were burned and required replacement.

Investigators checking the engine room after the fire reported finding the fuel and lube oil filters that had been removed during the routine maintenance from the port auxiliary engine in buckets near the engine, unburned and intact. The lube oil fill cap on the port auxiliary engine had not been reinstalled, and the lube oil filter housing plug was not threaded into the internally threaded port. It was found sitting with a wrench on a nearby storage cabinet.

The NTSB concludes that the crew did not properly check after performing the work and did not detect that the cap had not been reinstalled. When the engine was started, lube oil sprayed from the engine and hit the hot manifold, starting the fire. Because the crew was not onsite and instead doing a remote restart, they could not see it as it happened.

The NTSB warns of the need to follow manufacturer instructions and reports that the operator of the dredger undertook several changes to protocols. Among the changes is the requirement that a crew has to be onsite and perform a local restart. Starting up engines locally, rather than remotely, the NTSB asserts, gives crewmembers the opportunity to immediately verify that the engine is operating satisfactorily (to manufacturer’s specifications) with no visible fuel, lube oil, or water leaks, and has no atypical noises or vibrations that require it to be stopped.