Sunday 24 October 2021 · moved the Index · spike
ZIM Kingston fire
A container ship caught fire off the coast of British Columbia after a bomb cyclone knocked approximately 106 shipping containers into the Pacific Ocean. The crew was evacuated and rescued. Hazardous materials were burning aboard the vessel, and fires took several days to extinguish.
Peak 118.9 on Sunday 24 October 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Mixed, both over the window and on the peak day. Mixed means no single signal dominated — the attention was spread across search, research, news and social. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
The #11 incident since 2020 by peak. Its peak day ranks #215 among all days — the higher days all belong to 11 bigger incidents.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: pollution event. Trade press was 2% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 35% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 57% negative overall; 5% strongly so.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Sample of the headlines
- Fire burns aboard container ship off British Columbiaapnews.com · 2021-10-24
- Fire blazes on cargo ship containers off British Columbiareuters.com · 2021-10-24
- Fire Burns Aboard ZIM Container Ship off British Columbiahamodia.com · 2021-10-24
- Container ship fire off British Columbia smoldering, no ...trust.org · 2021-10-24
- Container ship fire off British Columbia smoldering, no longer spreadingswissinfo.ch · 2021-10-24
- British Columbia smoldering container ship fire, no longer spreadingnaveenbharat.in · 2021-10-25
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
Maritime Attention Index, incident: ZIM Kingston fire, peak 118.9 on 24 October 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-zim-kingston-fire/