JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Authorities are still working throughout Friday night into Saturday morning with the goal of maintaining the integrity of the Norwegian car-carrying vessel that caught on fire in Blount Island Thursday.
The ship, named the Höegh Xiamen, caught on fire around 4 p.m. where around 150 firefighters with the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department responded. An explosion occurred shortly before 7 p.m., sending eight firefighters to the hospital. One was sent for heat exhaustion.
On Friday, all but three firefighters left the hospital. Two of the ones who remain are undergoing surgeries and skin grafts for their burns, JFRD said.
While JFRD is scaling back its crews, the U.S. Coast Guard is upping its own, constantly spraying the ship with water to keep it cool and maintain its integrity in order to protect the environment from any potential oil spills.
During a news conference Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard said the bottom floors of the ship were ranging between 90 to 100 degrees. They said it got so hot in the ship that parts have melted, including some used vehicles that the ship was transporting out of Jacksonville.
Later, JFRD released infrared images to show the hottest parts of the ship; the parts that crews are aiming to cool down.
The red shows the hottest parts of the ship.
Throughout several news conferences, Fire Chief Keith Powers has stressed that battling ship fires tends to be the hardest job for firefighters because of extremely high heat and zero visibility conditions.
"Very steep, very narrow... one of the most dangerous situations a firefighter can encounter [is] a ship fire," Powers said Thursday.