a week of public testimony on last Summer's fatal cargo ship fire at Port Newark finally came to a close this week the witnesses ranged from emotional testimony by firefighters who were alongside Wayne Brooks Jr and Augusto akabu the two Newark firefighters who were killed battling the blaze to Maritime experts all of the testimony offered gritty details into that day and our reporter Ted Goldberg was there listening to that testimony for the last six of those sessions Ted good to have you on uh a lot of takeaways from this there were some items that we knew going in that of course these were firefighters who were charged with overseeing this port but they didn't necessarily have the tools and the training they needed what were the big takeaways So Not only was lack of training an issue as many people testified there was just a sequence of events that led to this so many little things had to go wrong that just compounded into everything that happened we start with you know a recall notice on a Jeep Wrangler which people wouldn't you may not think about too much if you're not driving an o08 Jeep Wrangler but you know has a transmission issue where you know it's it could possibly be leaking hot transmission fluid and you wouldn't think about that but that's how this fire started was we should remind people this was the jeep that was being used to push uh a lot of other vehicles that were on this cargo ship about 12200 yes and the FI the corrective action for this was to uh basically reroute a Dashboard Light to tell you okay don't drive this Jeep right now but the as someone testified as a Lasher testified the lights were not working on this car so it starts from there and then once the fire spreads the firefighters get there there's a language barrier because it's an Italian cargo ship and because of the way the ship is laid out with the amount of Steel the walkie-talkies the radio Transmissions it's very garbled it's very very difficult for people to understand each other a map is brought out produced by the crew and the firefighters are having trouble understanding this this is the first time they're seeing this map yes because and again the in-person training for shipboard fires they hadn't had that since 2014 and one of the experts who testified this week was William Burkett he's the director of the maritime incident response team at the Port of Virginia and he said you know there was a similar situation he had dealt with years back where a decision was made because there were no human lives at risk just just let the ship burn what are what are we risking to save this ship here I've almost in here i' injured some folks luckily for us it wasn't fatalities so what are we risking to save all right and I can't speak for the others but I can tell you for the spirit of noic there was no life Hazard if we continue to flow water inside the ship we would sink in at a Navy Pier which is not a good thing yeah so there we hear that they were really talking about weighing the risk of fighting this fire and uh or letting it burn and the risk seemed to be fighting it uh at least according to that testimony why didn't these firefighters though have that type of institutional knowledge with them well the other issue here is as many people testified there were no lives at risk a lot of folks testified that the firefighters knew the crew was off the ship as for why there was no specific training for this kind of thing offered to the firefighters it's a lot of people are upset and saying why aren't the firefighters train for the sort of thing more frequently well part of it is because cargo ship fires are not something the New York fire department responds to on a regular basis and the training for this sort of thing it's expensive and it's very uh it's it takes a lot of time and it's hard to get all of your firefighters to train for something at the same time as William Burkin testified you know it's not always as easy as just let's schedule training for our Department's firefighters well it has to be understood that the fire departments just aren't here to train on shipboard firefighting they have to do EMS they have to do Hazmat you got your other technical rescue they all have Staffing ISS issues right and and there's no such thing as free training wow I mean that's a line that I think is going to stay with a lot of people after this where does it go from here is the investigation over are these all of the witnesses that this joint board wanted to hear from so there are more witnesses but because of logistical issues they were not able to come to Union this week or last week so the investigation continues this hearing in a kind of Quasi sort of way will continue because they're going to be called Union and they're going to speak on this sort of thing in the future but the investigation is still ongoing the Coast Guard and the national Transportation safety board are going to be looking this they're going to be speaking to more witnesses once they are done with their investigation they will be issuing a report but there is no concrete timetable on that when on when that will come out of course uh families uh of the firefighters who died and of course all of those who were involved will be waiting uh to see that report Ted Goldberg thanks for staying on this for the six days of the hearing great reporting good to have you on thank you