A coal-carrying ship leaving the Port of Baltimore suffered a large explosion Monday evening, and in an eerie coincidence, it happened right near the site of the Key Bridge disaster.
Update: The Port of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry Federal Channel was closed for most of Tuesday, reopening to ship traffic in the late afternoon.
The Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD) says the explosion happened just before 6:30 p.m Monday. People living on the Anne Arundel County side of the Patapsco heard a loud boom, some even saying it shook their houses. The moment was caught on camera thanks to the Baltimore & Chesapeake Bay Shipwatchers’ live stream camera… the same fixed camera that caught the collapse of the Key Bridge. Here is the video recorded by Joe Pasko:
The ship is M/V W Sapphire, a 751-foot bulk carrier sailing under the flag of Liberia. BCFD says firefighters responded by both land and water, including the department’s fireboats. One of the vessels on scene was the 87-foot-long John R. Frazier, the region’s only full-time fireboat capable of responding “not only fires but any maritime emergency on the Chesapeake Bay,” according to BCFD spokesman John Marsh.
The W Sapphire had suffered damage from the explosion and fire, but remained afloat. The 23 crewmembers and two Maryland Pilots on board were accounted for and none was injured, the Coast Guard says. Baltimore County’s all-volunteer marine rescue squads, Marine Emergency teams 21 and 26 also responded. You can see in this photo, shared by Marine Emergency Team 26, the scorched cargo area of the W Sapphire:
The vessel was helped to the Port of Baltimore’s Annapolis Anchorage, near the Bay Bridge, by a fleet of tugboats.
The bulk carrier had arrived in Baltimore at the end of last week. Bay photographer David Sites captured these shots of it crossing under the Bay Bridge on Friday, Aug. 15:
Marsh called the explosion response “a unified incident involving the ship’s owner, the Baltimore City Fire Department, the Port of Baltimore, and the United States Coast Guard.” Fireboats are still with the ship as the Coast Guard and other agencies conduct an investigation. It’s up to the Coast Guard to release the W Sapphire. Its next destination was set to be the African nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, sometime in September.
The Coast Guard says that during the explosion, a hatch detached and went into the water. They were working on plans to locate and retrieve the hatch, tentatively to begin at 6 a.m Wednesday. According to USCG, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deployed the Buck a sonar-equipped survey vessel early Tuesday morning. The federal channel was deemed safe on Tuesday and reopened around 3:45 p.m.
