A ship caught fire while docking at Port Newark in New Jersey on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
The spokesman, Lenis Valens, said by phone early Thursday that Port Authority police officers responded after 9:30 pm Wednesday to a fire on a ship that was docked at the port.
Ms. Valens said she had no other details, including the condition of the fire.
Several New York City Fire Department units responded after midnight and operations were “continuing” around 3 a.m., the department said in a brief email.
Representatives for the Newark Department of Public Safety, the Newark Fire Division and the U.S. Coast Guard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
An Italian company, the Grimaldi Group, confirmed early Thursday that it owns the ship that caught fire in Newark. It did not say how the fire started or what was on the ship at the time. Grimaldi is based in Naples and has 130 ships and 17,000 employees, according to its website. The company describes itself as Italy’s largest ship-owning group.
Last year, a ferry owned by Grimaldi caught fire off the Greek island of Corfu en route to Italy, killing 11 people. Hundreds of others were saved.
Port Newark Container Terminal, as the port is officially called, is 272 acres, or about a third the size of Central Park in Manhattan. In January 2022, fire at a scrap metal recycling facility there produced smoke that wafted through Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The ports in New Jersey and neighboring New York State are owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Last year, the Port of New York and New Jersey was the second largest container port in terms of cargo volume in the United States – just behind the Port of Los Angeles and slightly ahead of the Port of Long Beach, also in California, according to Port Authority figures.
Of the $271 billion worth of goods that moved through the Port of New York and New Jersey in 2022, furniture was the top merchandise import; vehicles and their parts were the main export.
This is a developing story.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting.