Container Fires Continue With Increasingly Severe Consequences

When Gard last reviewed container ship fires, they noted for the approximate 250 million container shipments a year, everything goes well most of the time. Nevertheless, when a single container fire does occur, the consequences can be increasingly severe.

The container sector is not the only one suffering from cargo fires – vehicle fires on car carriers and ro-ro ships, scrap and coal fires on bulk carriers are other examples. In this article we focus on container ship fires, because this year fatalities and serious injuries reached double figures. This is based on a review of nearly twenty fire incidents in Gard’s claim records so far in 2025. The tragic consequence for people appears to arise mainly from responding to fires which raises serious considerations for the safety of tackling container fires onboard. There are also other reasons to focus on container fires:

The environmental footprint from fires burning for weeks, cargo lost overboard and the processing of tens of thousands of tonnes of fire debris and contaminated firefighting water; with ships themselves sometimes ending up as a wreck.

Hundreds of millions of dollars for salvage and port of refuge services, extra cargo handling, waste processing and ship repairs; as well as losses in respect of damaged and delayed cargo and lost vessel use.

Published by Gard.

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