Fire breaks out on wreck of Kathryn Spirit ship
The sad wreck of the Kathryn Spirit cargo ship, abandoned in the St. Lawrence River near Beauharnois in 2011, caught fire Tuesday.
Beauharnois firefighters, with help from colleagues from surrounding municipalities, took several hours to control the blaze, which emitted thick plumes of smoke.
When water proved ineffective, firefighters turned to foam and managed to quell the blaze. The fire, which the Beauharnois fire department was alerted to in the morning, was brought under control by 2 p.m.
Experts from Environment Canada and Environment Quebec were on hand, but were still waiting for the truck Tuesday afternoon required to take air samples, as it was being used in Longueuil earlier in the day. It was considered a precautionary measure because the fire had not raised serious concerns. There were no evacuations.
The fire broke out as the last chapter in the long saga of the Kathryn Spirit was coming to an end. After years of immobility, the federal government awarded an $11-million contract last year to a conglomeration of businesses to dismantle the ship. Ironically, one of the companies picked was the same one that abandoned the wreck in 2011.
In the meantime, an embankment was created in 2016 and 2017 to stabilize the ship, which was listing.
In December, the Coast Guard confirmed work was being done to patch and seal the vessel, and to decontaminate it before it was dismantled.
Several dangerous substances were on board, including asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), cleaning products, oil and grease. It was also suspected the ship contained lead, mercury, compressed carbon dioxide and radioactive materials. Most of those products were in the engine, but also in the materials used to build the ship.
It was not possible to determine, at the moment of writing, if the decontamination of the wreck had been completed before the ship caught fire. The dismantling of the ship is to be done under the constant supervision of the Coast Guard. The ship is to be completely dismantled and its parts taken away by September.
Built in 1967, the Kathryn Spirit has not had an owner since 2015, at which point the federal government took control. The ship, which had been used as a cargo ship in the past, had been towed to Beauharnois in 2011 by the Groupe StPierre, which wanted to dismantle it in the St. Lawrence River to then sell the scrap metal.
That project was refused by the province and residents of the region. The boat was then purchased by a Mexican company that was to dismantle it in Mexico, but it went bankrupt.
Since the saga of the Kathryn Spirit, Ottawa has introduced measures to its Oceans Protection plan to avoid similar incidents in the future.