Accommodation suites and kitchen of a ship were completely gutted when flames engulfed them at the port here in the early hours of Thursday. There was no damage to the sophisticated drilling equipment belonged to the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) that was loaded in the ship.
The incident took place in the wee hours of the day, when welding works were going on in the ship that was anchored at the NRW-1 berth of the Kakinada Seaports Limited. All of a sudden, fire started catching up the suites and the mechanics raised an alarm. Fire tenders were pressed into service and it took about three hours to put out the fire.
The ship belonged to the Shipping Corporation of India and it was given on hire the ONGC, which was using it to cart drilling equipment to its offshore sites along the east coast.
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A senior official of the ONGC, on condition of anonymity, said that it was not a major fire and there was no loss to the ONGC at all. A few suites in the ship were gutted in the fire and the loss had to be assessed only by the ship builder, he said, adding that the timely intervention of rescue teams and fire tenders had helped minimizing the loss.