No, the explosion was inevitable because the ammonium nitrate was contained in a confined space in a strong vessel.
The ship effectively was a bomb casing.
The only possibility of avoiding the explosion would be to completely flood the hold with water at the first sign of fire, and then you may run out of time, as ships are not designed to be flooded rapidly for this purpose.
All that was necessary was for the temperature to be raised on the confined ammonium nitrate.
Ammonium nitrate does not even need to be confined to explode, if it is in aggregated form. That occurs when it is reasonably pure and moisture has dissolved and reformed it from granules to larger crystals that cannot be separated.
On September 21, 1921, at the BASF fertilizer plant in Oppau Germany, an attempt at disaggregation of a fertilizer mix with industrial explosives caused the death of 561 people and left more than 2000 injured.
The dummies shocked unconfined, crystalline ammonium nitrate that was too pure.
Is that how it was in West also? Any temperature rise would have caused an explosion?