Overview
- The JMSDF accident committee, which released its report Friday, said oil leaking in the engine room ignited on a hot exhaust and a near‑instant loss of power undercut efforts to fight the blaze.
- Investigators traced the leak to a coupling on a generator’s fuel return line, with oil pooling on a heat cover before touching the exhaust, while smoke shorted equipment and cut shipwide microphones and seawater pumps.
- The crew judged the fire “suppressed” about four hours after it started, yet embers smoldering inside the wooden structure made full extinguishment hard to confirm and the blaze reignited.
- The report calls for piping without coupling joints, drills that assume engine‑room fires and total power loss, and revised firefighting steps tailored to wooden‑hull minesweepers.
- The minesweeper caught fire on November 10, 2024 off Munakata, capsized and sank about 14 hours later after roughly 40 crew evacuated, and an engine‑room petty officer, Tatsunori Koga, was later confirmed dead from remains found December 25.