another Costa cruise ship in trouble.

http://news.yahoo.com/italian-crew-assess-cause-cruise-ship-fire-152801394.html

I'm surprised a modern cruise ship could be so totally disabled by a fire in any one room, and that any room with any meaningful machinery with flammables wouldn't have "The Mother of All Fire Suppression" systems, being as how fire on a vessel is such a thing to avoid.

I've done a lot of new office construction and they all seem pretty well fire-suppressed and fire-caulked even if the door to outside is right near by.


In other Costa-Disaster news, I hear the investigators of Concordia was saying only dumb luck and a breeze pushed the ship onto land and prevented it going down in deep water, and going down fast with massive loss of life and no chance for the lifeboats after rolling over. They say I might have been the new Titanic.

 

SD,

These ships have the mother of all fire supression systems, CO2.

Being the number one enemy at sea, yes, worse than sinking, fire is paramount on the old priority list.

Hardest call a captain will ever make is to seal up that room with personel still inside and gas it killing everyone in there, oh, and putting out the fire.

-Tom

 

Halon is safer for personnel and more effective at low concentrations, but it's a CFC.

CO2 is dangerous at the levels that will suppress fire.

 

I work for a natural gas utility, and we still have halon fire suppression systems in our desert turbine pumping stations. I'm not sure how dangerous halon is, but protocol in case of a fire at those stations, or any emergency that might lead to a fire, is to get the !@#$ out the door ASAP.

 

Halon was the dog's bollocks at knocking fires out, but as you say it's a CFC so the perfect folk got it banned. What's a few working peoples lives to these parasites?

Years ago I was on an oil industry fire fighting course. We were all lined up taking turns to put out the fire with all the different extinquisher types. Me and my mate were at the end of the line and when it was my turn only the Halon extinquisher was left. I had seen it used before, so I did exactly as the instructor said but only give it a 2 second burst. The fire went out and everyone cheered. My mate says, "I'll beat that", and made his burst even less and the flame still went out to even louder cheers.

 

Yep, that would be the right thing to do regardless of whether there's any fire suppression system!

 

Notice that all these Costa ships have a single point of failure in that all there generators are in a single compartment, so when they fail for whatever reason they just drift.

 

It's not just dangerous, it's deadly.
In fact, it's better at killing a person than it is at putting out fires, and it's really good at putting out fires.
Too worsen matters, the engine room would have to be locked down for an extended period of time, like over an hour. So, if there is anyone in there, they couldn't get out.
Not a nice thing for a captian to have to do if there are crew remaining inside in order to save the ship.

-Tom

 

Of couse they put the fire out, but the question is where and what was on fire. You short-out 1/2 Ship Service Power panel (1SS/2SS) on a diesel-electric and you aren't going anywhere until you pull a lot of cable. The same with the day tank boost pump.

 

A valid point. The fire in my workshop didn't last long and the firemen put it down in about 30 seconds flat. But it was months before all the damage was repaired.

 

Not always. It's a judgment call. The walls of the compressor buildings and auxiliary buildings at our main station have fire extinguishers every few feet, and we keep them in working order.

The one time I had to deal with a fire, I stayed put and grabbed an extinguisher.

 

The only time I did that it didn't work. Only a tiny fire so I just threw a saucepan of water over it since it wasn't a grease fire. About 25 years later my young (at the time) son confessed to having "tested" it to make sure it worked! I don't really like things I can't test . . .