Tuesday 18 July 2023 · below the Index · spike
Port Newark cargo ship fire kills firefighters
A cargo ship fire at Port Newark, New Jersey killed at least two firefighters, including Wayne Brooks Jr., who was posthumously promoted. The fire was expected to burn for days.
Peak 65.1 on Thursday 20 July 2023. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day. 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
This was above 63% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Thursday 13 July 2023.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
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 6% 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 25% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 11% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Funeral held for Wayne Brooks Jr., second firefighter killed in Port Newark cargo ship firemy9nj.com · 2023-07-17
- Firefighters killed battling cargo ship fire posthumously promotedthechiefleader.com · 2023-07-19
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title. fewer than three independent outlets.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (86/517 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Port Newark cargo ship fire kills firefighters, peak 65.1 on 20 July 2023. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2023-port-newark-cargo-ship-fire-kills-firefighters/