Car ID’d As Source of Containership Blaze Off Florida

Officials in Miami have identified a car as the source of a fire that broke out Saturday night onboard a Liberian-flagged containership while underway off the coast of Florida, but the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Officials said that the crew of the 656-foot Leda Trader detected a fire below deck in one of the ship’s cargo holds shortly after departing Port Everglades late Saturday night for Costa Rica, forcing the ship to make an emergency stop at the Port of Miami.

The ship then docked Sunday morning at Dodge Island where crews had to offload a total of 48 containers so that fire crews could determine the extent of the damage and source of the blaze.

It was later determined that the ship’s fire suppression system had extinguished the fire, which was said to have broken out near the top of one of the ship’s cargo holds. A spokesman Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said that a car was destroyed by flames inside the hold where the fire originated.

No injuries were reported in the incident.

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