Seattle-based Trident Seafoods has filed a lawsuit alleging that the City of Tacoma in Washington had mishandled the firefighting response on the factory trawler Kodiak Enterprise nearly three years prior.
The fire on Kodiak Enterprise ignited in the dry stores room on April 8, 2023, while the vessel was docked at a Trident facility in Tacoma for a scheduled overhaul.
In the suit, Trident accused the Tacoma Fire Department of gross negligence by implementing firefighting measures contrary to the recommendations of Resolve Marine, which the company had contracted for the incident response.
Resolve had suggested that all ventilation on the vessel be shut down to allow the fire in the forward compartments to be burned out, thus mitigating the risk.
Trident said, however, that the Tacoma Fire incident commander allegedly ordered fans to be brought on board the vessel to blow air into the space as a means of ensuring positive pressure ventilation (PPV).
Because there was no controlled ventilation pathway that would have allowed smoke and hot air to be blown out, the blaze only intensified, forcing firefighters to evacuate.
The fire spread through Kodiak Enterprise over the next few days, and the vessel was declared a total loss of US$56.6 million, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a report one year after the incident.
Trident said that the vessel would not have suffered significant damage if Tacoma Fire had only followed Resolve Marine's recommendation to isolate the blaze instead of implementing PPV.
