A thick plume of smoke rose over the Bronx on Tuesday after a barge loaded with scrap metal and crushed cars caught fire on the Hutchinson River near Boston Road, sending firefighters scrambling to attack the blaze from both land and water. No injuries were reported, and officials say no structures were damaged.
The fire broke out on a barge docked in a port near Boston Road in the Baychester section of the Bronx, according to CBS News, which reported that officials said the fire was first reported just before 2:30 p.m. A separate fire involving a barge at Pascap Scrap Recyclers broke out Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 27, 2014.
Fire crews battled the flames from the ground and the water, per the CBS report, and separately, CBS New York reported that Mount Vernon firefighters and the FDNY were both on scene hosing down the barge, which was carrying crushed cars and scrap metal on the river between the Bronx and Mount Vernon. Crews applied foam in an effort to contain the fire, the same report noted.
Traffic Snarled on Boston Road and the Parkway
The blaze also caused traffic congestion for drivers in the area. Traffic on nearby Boston Road/Route 1 and on the Hutchinson River Parkway backed up as a result of the fire, according to CBS New York's report. As of the latest updates, the cause of the fire remained undetermined.
ABC7 New York's August 2014 report described a separate fire at Pascap Scrap Recyclers in the Eastchester section of the Bronx, where the blaze was fully involved by the time the New York City Fire Department arrived and the department responded quickly. Per ABC7, Pascap describes itself on its website as one of the largest scrap-metal processors in the tri-state area.
A 2014 Fire at a Bronx Scrap Yard
In 2014, a barge carrying scrap metal caught fire in Eastchester near the Pascap recycling center, and no injuries were reported at the time, according to The New York Times City Room.
A 2024 barge fire on Newtown Creek in Long Island City was determined to have been sparked by an exploding lithium-ion battery that was among the scrap metal onboard the vessel, according to QNS. That fire drew 12 FDNY units and 60 firefighters and EMS personnel, including a tower ladder and marine units, and took more than four hours to extinguish, the outlet reported.
QNS also noted that the FDNY has reported lithium-ion batteries caused 171 fires citywide in a single year, leaving 59 people injured and three dead, and that 2023 data showed nearly 60% of those battery fires involved batteries that were not even charging at the time.
A Barge Fire at a City Sanitation Pier
A barge loaded with paper recycling caught fire at the Department of Sanitation's W59th Street marine transfer station on the Hudson River, an incident that W42ST reported renewed concerns about improperly discarded lithium-ion batteries. That blaze prompted the FDNY to dispatch 21 Fire and EMS units and 79 personnel after receiving the call at 9:47 a.m., with an FDNY fireboat assisting in putting it out and no injuries reported, according to W42ST.
Back in the Bronx, officials have not released additional details on what sparked Tuesday's fire. For now, the scrap-metal barge joins a growing list of waterborne blazes that have tested FDNY crews working the city's rivers and piers.
