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A fire broke out aboard the freezer longliner Blue Pacific Wednesday morning while it was tied up at the Coastal Transportation dock.

Public safety’s deputy chief, Michael Holman, says the fire appears to have been an accident. He says the source of the blaze was a space heater in the vessel’s hold, installed near pallets of a flammable packing material called “fiber.”

"It’s a paper bag that’s reinforced on the inside to make it a little more sturdy," Holman says.

Three pallets of fiber burned up before the fire was put out.

Unalaska’s firefighters worked with the Blue Pacific's crew, the Coast Guard, and firefighters from the state trooper vessel Stimson on the response. They started fighting the blaze around 8:30 a.m., and wrapped up in about two hours. No one was hurt and the vessel’s crew was safely evacuated.

Riight now, the Coast Guard is still investigating whether the vessel is structurally sound. But Holman says there’s a lot of visible damage -- inside and out.

"There’s obviously a lot of smoke damage, and the fiber that was destroyed by the flames," he says. "There’s some electrical wires that have been burned through and some scorching. And the outside of the vessel, where the heat [got through,] there’s a lot of paint that’s been blistered off of the hull."

Even though the investigation’s still underway, roadblocks around the Coastal dock have been taken down. Emergency responders put a boom in the water around the F/V Blue Pacific to ensure that no oil or fuel leaked out while the bilge was emptied. Holman says the boom will stay in place for the next few days as a precaution.

The F/V Blue Pacific is owned by Blue North Fisheries of Seattle. President Kenny Down did not respond to a request for comment.