Days after the cargo ship explosion and fire that injured nine Florida firefighters, the fire chief is still amazed that no lives were lost during the call.
All but two of the nine Jacksonville firefighters who were hospitalized after battling the massive blaze aboard an auto hauler at the Blount Island Marine Terminal on Thursday have been released, WJXT-TV reports. Those two firefighters are in a Gainesville burn unit and will be undergoing skin grafts.
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“We came very close to losing some firefighters the other night," Jacksonville Fire Chief Keith Powers told WJXT. “There had to be something to save some of those people from losing their lives, and God is the reason that is.”
Although no one was killed during the call, may of the injuries to the nine firefighters were serious. Those injuries included burns to hands and heads, as well as a significant arm injury to one firefighter.
“To see them start to come off that ship and seeing those burns and one of them with a nasty orthopedic injury to his arm—it crushed me," Powers told WJXT.
Crews continue to douse the exterior of the cargo ship with water in an effort to lower the temperature of the vessel's hull, which has reached 1,000 degrees. Randy Wyse, president of the Jacksonville Association of Firefighters compared the heat inside the ship to that of an oven, and he praised the firefighters' equipment for protecting them.
“I think one thing to look at is our gear," he told WJXT. "All the burns are very similar as it relates to our gear and I think our gear did a phenomenal job in an atmosphere that can cause burns."
