Two Crew Killed in Engine Room Fire on South Korean Product Tanker
The 7,300-tonne tanker was carrying 12.4 million litres of Bunker C off Incheon
Two crewmembers have been confirmed dead after a fire aboard a South Korean-flagged product tanker off Incheon. The South Korean Coast Guard said the two, one in his 20s and the other in his 60s, were found in the engine room, where the fire is assumed to have started.
The report of the fire aboard the 7,300-tonne oil product tanker reached the Incheon branch of the Coast Guard at around 22:30 local time on August 27. Multiple units, including fireboats, were dispatched to the vessel, which was about 4.6 miles north of Jawol Island.
There were 18 crewmembers aboard, 11 of them Korean. Sixteen were taken off the ship. The bodies of the two missing crew were later recovered from the engine room.
The tanker was carrying 12.4 million litres of Bunker C fuel. The Coast Guard said the fire took over five hours to extinguish but that they were able to prevent it from spreading to the fuel tanks. That containment is the difference between a casualty confined to the machinery space and a pollution incident in one of the busiest approaches on the Korean west coast.
An investigation into the cause of the fire will be carried out. The vessel's owner was arranging a salvage tow at the time of the last official update.
Jawol Island lies in the approaches to Incheon, one of the busiest stretches of coastal water on the Korean west coast and a routine bunkering and product distribution area. The tanker was within a few miles of the island when the fire was reported, which is what allowed fireboats to reach her inside the window in which the machinery space fire could still be contained.
Engine room fires remain one of the most persistent casualty categories in the coastal product trades, where older tonnage and short, high-frequency voyages leave limited windows for machinery maintenance.
