# Cruise Ship Engine Room Fires



## Macphail (Oct 27, 2008)

Cruise Ship Engine Room Fires.

I would have thought in modern terms this was very unlikely.
The old thing with medium speed engines, was burst or leaking fuel pipes spraying on a hot exhaust.
Does this still happen with the double contained sheathed pipes, with the float alarm catch pot..
Or is it electrical fires.
Or under manning with all the implications.


John.


----------



## john g (Feb 22, 2005)

One things for sure your never going to find out exactly what happened


----------



## G0SLP (Sep 4, 2007)

The difference between cruise ships and other ships is that if a cruise ship has any trouble then it's headline news. One can, and does, minimise the risk of fire etc, but ultimately, it's a machine, albeit a very complex one, and thus can suffer failure.

The competence, or otherwise, of crews is another matter, of course.


----------



## cubpilot (Aug 18, 2008)

With the greater reliability of machinery these days i doubt that there are more fires than years ago, it is just that in the old days with four or fiveon watch, any fire would be spotted quickly and possibly dealt with before it set hold. the reliance on automation and fire sensors does increase the time to react to a fire and hence fires can be far more destructive. 
i had two fires at sea. one had the potential to be very damaging but was spotted as it happened and put out, the other quite a minor fire when it began was on a ums ship. it took hold in the 10 mins or so to react to the alarms and caused significant damage.


----------



## A.D.FROST (Sep 1, 2008)

cubpilot said:


> With the greater reliability of machinery these days i doubt that there are more fires than years ago, it is just that in the old days with four or fiveon watch, any fire would be spotted quickly and possibly dealt with before it set hold. the reliance on automation and fire sensors does increase the time to react to a fire and hence fires can be far more destructive.
> i had two fires at sea. one had the potential to be very damaging but was spotted as it happened and put out, the other quite a minor fire when it began was on a ums ship. it took hold in the 10 mins or so to react to the alarms and caused significant damage.


Just think what would happen on these large box boats with bridge forward engine room aft?(Cloud)


----------



## ARRANMAN35 (Oct 1, 2005)

cubpilot said:


> With the greater reliability of machinery these days i doubt that there are more fires than years ago, it is just that in the old days with four or fiveon watch, any fire would be spotted quickly and possibly dealt with before it set hold. the reliance on automation and fire sensors does increase the time to react to a fire and hence fires can be far more destructive.
> i had two fires at sea. one had the potential to be very damaging but was spotted as it happened and put out, the other quite a minor fire when it began was on a ums ship. it took hold in the 10 mins or so to react to the alarms and caused significant damage.


Hi,
Never was involved in any fire in the ER during my time at sea,
as you say it would have been spotted by the watch keepers and no
doubt dealt with promptly. No "comfort" of the control room and the
reliance on instrumentation, just get your "butt" round the job and
spot potentail faults and act accordingly.


----------



## E.Martin (Sep 6, 2008)

Few years ago Wife a I was on a cruise ship on passage from St Maarten to Madeira,early evening we were in the cinema I could smell fumes then we were told to leave the cinema and that there was a complete smoking ban through out the ship,I realized that the ship had stopped, as we made our way to one of the bars we could see the crew running about wearing lifejackets,"The wife was not happy seeing the crew running",90 minutes later we resumed our passage,turns out it was fuel escaping onto a hot pipe which caused the trouble,was told later by a engineer that it could have been very serious.


----------



## cryan (Jan 8, 2007)

I can only speak of my own experience aboard P&O's Aurora but compared to other ships I have sailed on modern Cruise ships are by far the safest modern vessels afloat. During the day there is often up to 20 people in the machinery spaces which are arranged in a way which makes moving around and detection of problems easy. At night there is always at least three people on watch at any time with usualy at least one of those down the pit. The ECR is always manned and with tens of thousands of sensors which can not only sound alarms but they can be monitored and their histories brought up in graph form within seconds to show trends which can help fault find as well as easily identify sensor faults. There are video cameras in many of the spaces showing engine tops and furnace fronts etc tied with infra-red detectors etc. also when things do go wrong there is enough people and equipment to deal with any problem. During my time on Aurora we had a crankcase explosion caused by the failure of a gudgeon pin on a M/E whilst we were at anchor. It blacked the ship out and two filipino fitters who were involved in a unit overhaul on the next engine were un accounted for. The whole incident from explosion to stand-down including mustering of fire teams, finding the missing crew (who were hiding in the crankcase out of the smoke) getting the lights back on and every ships service back to normal took eleven minutes. The enine was stripped and rebuilt in under a week and by the time the MAIB got out to Italy to check up on us everything was back to normal. The best system I have ever encountered was fitted on there which was Hi-Fog which quite frankly should be mandatory on all ships. It can safely put out any fire in milliseconds without the need to use lethal gasses... I will concede that at that time Aurora was UK flag and crewed by British Officers and hand picked and highly trained filipino crew. I would perhaps have more concern on vessels using less well trained officers and crews.
There is a habbit to **** off modern monitoring systems but they are a tool. and if used properly are far superior to the old fasioned guages. You just need to learn how they work. Computer overviews and mimics are also better at showing false readings than traditional guages as you can see the bigger picture.


----------



## john-elcid (Mar 15, 2010)

Picking up on Cryan's point about Hi-Fog or Water fog extinguishing systems, in my time with P&O Ferries, Dover, we retro-fitted Hi-Fog to all of the ships as secondary system in addition to the CO2 flooding. The Fleet Director didn't want to fit the system on the retiring Bruges on the grounds that it would be a waste of money. Initially Hi-Fog was installed on all of the ex P&O ships then Fogtec on all of the ex Stena ships after the merger. The arrangement was to be able to smother each engine individually and also a barrier between it and the adjacent engine so it was not necessary to smother all of the engine rooms. 
Within a few weeks of fitting it to the Provence they had a generator fire. The lid of a Glacier lub-oil filter was loosened whilst the engine was still running but the shut-off cock handle was loose so it was still under pressure. The oil sprayed onto the adjacent running generator and went on fire. The Fogtec was operated and the fire was out within 2 minutes. Damage was caused to many plastic electrical parts, light fittings and some cabling in the compartment but was relatively slight. The ship was taken off service for less than 2 days as that gennie room was in darkness and there were no alarm systems in there.
Without Fogtec, the ship could have been a write-off in the worst case. CO2 might have dealt with it but takes too much time, assessment, portable extinguishers, fire hoses run out, evacuation, shut down ventilation and dampers, head-count and operate CO2. With water fog, just select and press the button. Another problem with CO2 is, it's a one hit system. Like an Aldi advert, when it's gone, it's gone. With water-fog you can run it until you run out of electricity from the emergency gennie, or water and there's plenty of that at sea. It doesn't actually use much water, less than 200 liters per minute. It is heavy on electricity though and the rules are that the emergency gennie must be of adequate capacityb to supply ALL the emergency systems simultaneously, fire, bilge, drencher, lighting, navigation, etc. A tall order as a retro-fit but the MCA went along with it thankfully.
There were a couple of smaller, and incipient fires on other ships, which were dealt with speedily, preventing a real fire as the instructions issued were "If in doubt, hit the tit."
The system purchase and installation cost about £100,000 per ship in 2000/2001, total for all ships just over £1 million so more than paid for itself within a couple of years. The company rule was that every capital outlay should pay for itself within 2 years but how can you quantify pay-back on a system like this without recourse to a crystal ball?
Subsequently it became mandatory to fit such a local system, in addition to the primary system, to new-build Ro-ro passenger ferries. I presume by now that it's also mandatory for cruise ships but usually there is no requirement to retro-fit, the Grandfather clause. I don't have access to Solas any more so don't know.
Having said that, I've been involved in fitting Water-fog on a Trinity House and Northern Lights MFTs and a luxury yacht.
I was on a cruise ship later which had Halon main system, no secondary or local. Some swear by Halon. My point to the Technical Director was that if we ever had to use it we would be out of service as Halon was banned by the EU. His argument was that as we were Bahamian register and called at Tunis every couple of weeks, we could get it there. A bit short-sighted I would suggest. The ship was featured on 'Cruises from Hell'. I wouldn't argue with that, it was Hell for me, or perhaps Island Alcatraz (clue here). It did have water-fog over the galley deep fat friers though. That ship was expected to run with only one 2E/O on watch with one motorman, all the 3E/Os on daywork. I didn't agree and put the 3E/Os on watch in addition as most of the automatic control systems didn't work, were antique and not repairable. I fell out with management on that and some illegal activities which they demanded I carry out. We parted company. That was 10 years ago and the ship is still running. I must have been wrong!!!
I swear by Water-fog systems and must state that I am not, nor ever have been employed by Marioff, Fogtec or any other company, nor am I in any of their pockets. 
Miserable b*****s never even gave me a top-end spanner.


----------



## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Miserable b*****s never even gave me a top-end spanner.[/QUOTE]

If one is not on the way now they are indeed miserable. But what of maintenance? I have in my mind's eye miles of piping and many nozzles (presumably quite precise in construction) clogged with scale and other detritus especially if used even once with seawater (presumably initiated from a freshwater reservoir?).

Perhaps, like all intergrated 'electronics', the system will need replacement during fatigue lifetime of certain shiptypes.


----------



## john-elcid (Mar 15, 2010)

In common with all emergency equipment it needs testing regularly. In P&O Stena we tested one section per month, an active test so that the effect can be seen and experienced, any blocked nozzles changed or cleaned as required. This was to build up confidence to use it and the beauty is that it causes no damage except a few earth faults which clear within half an hour or so. You can't do active tests with CO2 or Halon so in an emergency, previous operational experience is usually zero.
I witnessed a test in a computer room once and the computers still continued working. I don't think that their IP rating had been improved in any way for the demonstration. It's like a very heavy fog so breathing can be a bit laboured, but it's not in any way lethal.
The nozzle heads have a filter built in as the nozzles are very fine. All of the pipework is stainless steel, perhaps 30mm diameter or more from the pump unit, reducing to 6mm to each head. The systems are designed to run ideally on distilled or R/O water, which is plentiful on cruise ships and most ships nowadays are fitted with a technical water system, or fresh water topped up from the domestic system but usually a sea cross-connection is included for emergency emergency use. Best not to use this for test purposes otherwise there will be sedimentation causing blockages, like you get with a drencher system.
The electronics aren't particularly complicated, simply relays to operate section valves, switch on the pumps, alarms and indication. It's always good to carry a spare PC card, but that applies to all electronic control systems.
Expecting a virtual top-end spanner by e-mail any time now.


----------



## Duncan112 (Dec 28, 2006)

I sailed on a Spanish built cross channel ferry which had a hi fog system fitted and I really rated it BUT it turned out that the yard had tested the system with sea water which led to corrosion problems in the (non marine grade!!) stainless steel piping, ultimately causing failure and limited water damage to some passenger cabins.

When I came ashore I worked in consultancy and was responsible for getting a paper mill to install a hi fog system to replace the steam smothering system on the web dryer - a great success and the proof of transferable technology.


----------

