PHOTO: Small fire on board a ship

Update from Station Manager Dave Bond at 8am

Crews from our specialist marine rescue team worked with the ship’s crew and Tilbury Docks staff to resolve this incident as well as many other multi agency partners including the East of England Ambulance Service, HART (Hazardous Area Response Teams) and the Environment Agency.

Station Manager Dave Bond said: "The work of the initial crews from Orsett and Grays in establishing an understanding of what we were dealing with and then setting up that initial incident structure was key to ensuring this incident was resolved as quickly as possible. Support from our Marine Advisor Group Manager Marc Diggory was also crucial in ensuring the decisions we made were all done in conjunction with the Captain and with an understanding of the overall impact on the ship and its stability. Incidents like this show the variety of risk we have in the county of Essex, and how much training as firefighters and officers we need to have to resolve any incident we are sent to. It also showed how important it is to have the good inter agency working that we have in Essex to resolve incidents with minimum disruption and risk.”

Update at 6.40am today (Friday)

Our firefighters left the scene at around midnight last night after carrying out temperature checks. 

Update at 11.15pm

Steady progress is being made and the cargo is continuing to be unloaded from the ship. Temperature checks are being monitored.

Firefighters are dealing with a small fire on board a ship at Tilbury Docks.

Crews were called at 8.09pm tonight following reports of a scrap metal fire in the hold of a docked vessel.  They are working with the team at Tilbury Docks to remove the scrap metal from the ship using a dockside crane. 

Station Manager Dave Bond said: “This is a small fire on board the ship. We are working with crews at Tilbury Docks to carry out a controlled unloading of the scrap metal and extinguish the fire.”

This incident is on-going.