CARNIVAL TRIUMPH DISABLED BY FIRE

Tony,
How do these fires get started ? I worked on turbine vessels for twelve happy years and never saw a fire . Is it the plant or poor maintenance ? I once argued against automated engine rooms in the old days and said you can't improve on human sight and hearing down below. A computer only detects a fire when it has started but a vigilant watchkeeper can spot the possibility beforehand. Typical is diesel fuel getting onto hot manifolds.
As far as cabins is concerned we had a balcony cabin on a Holland America ship, the Noordam, and it was great. It was in the Med so we spent all our time on the balcony especially arriving and departing, watching the pilots come and go etc. It would be easier to evacuate in case of trouble too!
Kevin

But there have been fires at sea ever since engines were invented. Cape Town Castle, Windsor Castle are two I know of, and at the time the Windsor was in Durban. There have no doubt been many others and the cause in many cases is something simple. The problem with modern cruise ships is thta there is no back up system. The main engine is nothing more than a generator to generate electricity for all aspecst of the ship including propulsion. I believe some of the newer ships such as QE3 do have back up systems. Many of the cruise shps out there were built in Italy and are reaching some 20 years or more of age. Some have during that time had multiple owners. All P&O cruise ships regularly sailing from Oz fall into this catergory.

Hi All.
Iv'e just read in the news paper that Carnival Cruise's have announced that the Triumph would no longer be cruising.
Cheers Des
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On joining one of these ships must be one of the first jobs to see that the 2 Red Not Under Command lamps were oiled and ready to go. Would keep the old lamp trimmer fully employed. the number of breakdowns must point to some salient defect somewhere. Or maybe a number of different defects. Should imagine crews have been told not to talk about. Cheers John Sabourn

Scavenge fires and the likes were quite common on some types of Doxford engine and was on one ship was nearly a daily occurence at one time. Quickest way to put out was by slowing ship down and slowing feed to engine. The Engineers on this site may not agree with this, but this is what I was told years ago by an engineer. I agree with the post about unmanned engine rooms, I never liked, and will always believe a person on a fire watch is the better choice of the two, or ideally have both a watchkeeper as well as all the computers, however this defeats the whole purpose, which of course is money. If some people had their way there would be no one on Bridge either, just a watchkeeping robot. Maybe the days of Flash Gordon will soon be here. Cheers John Sabourn

When I see calamitys such as discussed about over flowing toilets etc. I look at these vessels try and estimate the number of passengers and crew say on average 8000 total, if use the toilet facilities 3 times a day, they must have sewage tanks large enough to accomodate this amount of waste, I visualise them as a Wedding cake floating on a huge pool of waste. They must nowadys carry special persons to maintain the machinery and chemicals for break up before discharge into the sea. Anyone know if they carry what can only be described as sewage engineers. Cheers John Sabourn

i only ever sailed on one ship with a sewage plant, thv patricia, seem to remember the second engineer looked after it, the carnival triumph must have a massive sewage plant, would think a engineer must be responsible, with help.

Used to call them topaz on Indian crew ships. The modern technology alone that must go into this plant however would probably be above the old topaz wallahs head. Cheers John Sabourn

The newer cruise ships do have a Sewage plant, similar to shoreside, all the waste goes through it, the solids are taken out treated and dried and packed and then unloaded onto special lorries in port and disposed of, the fluids are treated and turned into fresh water which is used for washing down etc, but not for drinking.
That is what I have been told on my last trip which ended with a VNC stamped in my passport.
Brian.
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PS. When I was in Hawaii on the TV news one channel was on the Triumph 24 hours a day, interesting.
They were speaking to several passengers by phone from the helicopters with photography via the Mobiles. of the interior.
From what I heard the whole behavior of the Passengers was disgusting.
A boat went alongside and delivered boxes of fresh food, and sandwiches etc. A passenger said some passengers were grabbing 20 times the amount they were supposed to have, stuffing their shirts with as much food as they could stuff in. Alley ways ankle deep in urine and crap, they were doing it every where.
behaving like savages.
To me an organised ship would be , if no toilets, use one swimming pool for the ladies and one for the men. with the necessary boards across to sit on, all the urine and crap contained in one place, then it would be easy to discharge later and clean. The food could be distributed by cabin Number only instead of the free for all as happened, many people went hungry because of the big fat animals grabbing it all.
It was fascinating watching human behavior at its worst. Big Fat Yanks scoffing everything and then crapping and urinating everywhere. It was shown 24 hours a day for over two days.
I do not know what the Officers were doing obviously not a lot, On Carnival they are usually Italian, say no more. Some passengers said the philipino crew were excellent trying to help but with no back up. Their conditions were worse, as the urine and crap filtered down into their accommodation and they had no ports for fresh air.
Brian

Brian when the so and so hits the fan, thats when one can get a great many surprises about self survival and the way you would never think people can react. From those hiding away from what they think they cant face, to those who want to do all the shouting and making themselves heard above others. I watch some of these so called survivors after certain disasters and can visualize how they reacted during life threatening circumstances, you will probably find that those who do all the shouting afterwards on what happened and what they did, are talking through compulsion to clear their own consciences and what they did, they have no hesitation in pointing fingers at others never beleiving themselves to be part of a worsening situation. I sailed with an ex matelot who was on a warship on the Malta convoys, his ship was sunk but a number of boats got away, which were soon full to capacity, he told me that survivors in the water were being struck on the head with the blades of the oars as weapons to prevent the overcrowding of boats. This was done by a few panic ridden people. Whereas that is what the grablines on the sides of the old type boat is exactly for what they were designed, probably a lot of unneccessary deaths. Unfortuanetly the not so recent now Costa Concordia master was more than likely one of the panic type and self survival ones, the first person who should definetely be the one who shouldnt have been. I have been on vessels with sewage tanks and also incinerators, however never one with the capacity that those vessels carrying 8000 souls , the size of which I wouldnt have a clue. I therefore thought it may by now be a so called specialists job. Thanks for the info. Cheers John Sabourn.