Fire on cargo ship in B.C. under control but not known how many containers burned

Officials don't yet know how many containers burned aboard a cargo ship in a still-smouldering blaze off the coast of Victoria, a spokesman for the Canadian Coast Guard said Sunday.

The flames initially spread to 10 containers after another 40 fell overboard in choppy waters on Friday, but JJ Brickett said the fire on the MV Zim Kingston was mostly under control by Sunday afternoon.

“Looking at the actual images, it's a pile,” Brickett told a virtual news conference. “The containers burned down to basically their shell and then collapsed on top of one another.”

Provincial and federal officials are working with all the First Nations on the west coast of Vancouver Island while investigating the fire aboard the ship, he said.

Brickett said the location of some of the containers that landed in the ocean is being monitored by helicopter, but efforts to retrieve them can't start until after a break in a storm that is forecast to worsen until Monday.

Efforts to read labels on the downed containers in order to try and identify their contents have not been fruitful and officials are trying to account for all of them, Brickett said.

“One of the objectives for the response is 100 accountability for all of these containers - where they are, what happened to them, what was in them. And to the extent that we can, how can we recover them.”

The MV Zim Kingston had experienced some damage as it approached Vancouver and the crew were in contact with the Canadian Coast Guard and Transport Canada, he said, adding the vessel was assessed off the Strait of Juan de Fuca where it was anchored for repairs and to await further contact with the latter agency.

He said Transport Canada inspectors will be aboard the ship after the “emergency phase” of securing the safety of the vessel and those still on it, and that its Greece-based owner is providing assistance.