Cruise Ship Fire

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Cruise Ship Fire

Post by JK »

A crappy day for the engineers. I wonder what Canada would have done if this had happened in our waters, send one of the "Spirit" ships to it?
Cruise ship fire leaves 4,500 stranded off Mexico coast

A cruise ship which sailed from California has caught fire and is having to be towed back to shore, with 4,500 people on-board but unharmed.

The Carnival Splendor was 200 miles (310km) south of San Diego, when the blaze broke out on Monday morning, said owners Carnival Cruise Lines.

Tugboats will tow the ship to port and the US Navy is also sending an aircraft carrier to help.

Passengers will get a full refund.

The 952ft (290m) Carnival Splendor sailed from Long Beach, California, on Monday for a seven-day cruise of the Mexican Riviera.

There are 3,299 passengers on board, along with 1,167 crew.

The fire in the engine room cut off most power supplies. Toilets and cold running water were restored on Monday night.

Air conditioning, hot food service and telephones are not working.

The ship has been drifting 55 miles (90km) off the coast of Mexico.

When the fire started, passengers were initially asked to move from their cabins to the open upper deck.

Later, they were allowed to go back to their rooms.

Bottled water and cold food items were provided, the cruise company said.

The US Navy is sending the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to help.

A plane will take 35 pallets of supplies to the carrier for transfer by helicopter to the stricken cruise ship.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by JK »

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/cruises/ ... 1_CV_N.htm
Carnival president and CEO Gerry Cahill said the "very surprising" fire began in No. 5 of the ship's six generators. He said a "crankcase split, and that's what caused the fire.
Non-marine speak for a crankcase explosion, which makes me wonder why the oil mist detector never picked up the problems beforehand.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by The Dieselduck »

Yes, there is quite a few red flags going up in the back of my brain regarding this crankcase explosion. On LinkedIn a comment was made about waiting for a "swift and open inquiry".

I don't think you will ever hear anything further on this. Cruise lines are not the types to do their laundry in public, unless they are forced to, and the Panamanian Flag is not likely to force the issue with ones of its biggest clients.

I find it very surprising that such a failure caused the whole power plant to fail. Modern ships like this are designed for this eventuality. It would be nice to hear a bit more technical stuff aside from the dramatic stinky toilets and the "scurge of eating too many sandwiches and pop tarts" that the media is concentrating on. I suspect the problem has to be more serious matter then a "simple" crankcase explosion. I think a ship of that vintage with the size of that technical team, should be able to surmount this type of problem, or at least restore a majority of the hotel services and at least half of the propulsion.

We are missing some important details from the reporting that is for sure... like usual.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by JK »

Apparently it took 3 hours to get the fire out?
I would be very curious to know if they had a high fog system in the engine-room and how it performed.

This ship is going to be out of service for a few months to sort this out. The lawsuits will be flying!

I wonder if the passengers understand how lucky they are. Probably not.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by The Dieselduck »

The media is the usual sounding board for such big corporations. "our hearts go out to them" type statements, but I wonder if anyone has been concerned about the crew members, they undoubtedly were impacted much more severely. The large majority live well below the passenger decks. Sure the passengers had a few days "ordeal" and will be compensated, rightly so, but I don't suppose the company will give their crew members such as housekeepers and wait staff their usual weekly tips, which is their main income, as I am pretty darn sure no many passengers will be leaving any.

Here a clip from a news story -

Really? Word on the sea was that Pop-Tarts and Spam were the plats du jour. But a tweet by Carnival personnel disputed that account: "Despite media reports to the contrary, Carnival Splendor guests were never served SPAM!" Of course, that provoked a slew of comments from Spam lovers everywhere. (Carnival later added that "while some SPAM was delivered, it was never served to guests.")

No, no, we save that shit for our crew.

I have been looking but I cant find out why the ship was so impacted from one engine failure.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by The Dieselduck »

Heres some videos from YouTube, supposedly from Carnival Splendor's engine room. Looks like your garden variety Wartsila 12V46 engine with an Ansaldo alternator in the same compartment. The ships I worked with at Royal Caribbean had the alternators in separate compartments from the engines, and two engines in two separate engine rooms to prevent the very same problem. Of course protected with the usual CO2 flooding system, piped in FiFi foam, and the usual fire protection. But primarily protected by manually activated HiFog system from the control room, and of course, locally.

With a properly working hi fog system there is little reason why this fire would have gone on for "hours" and it apparently flared up after as well. On the boat I was on the remote HFP shutoff valves, inlet and outlet are located near the front of the engine had to be regularly tested for operation and found defective numerous times due to heavy vibrations in the area. Without these two valves, activate with the emergency stop from ecr, which also tripped the circuit breaker, the engine may continue to run for some some time as there is plenty of fuel in the system.

I have worked on Fincantieri built ships in the past, and this engine room looks very similar to the one I worked on. My impression back then was that the engine room was very large and open, presenting a challenge for firefighting, as opposed to RCCL ships which had almost claustrophobic engine rooms, but of course allowed a much quicker isolation of major problems such as a fire or flooding. I also remember having both boilers in the engine room, the forward one in my case, which if this was the case on the splendor, and they were damaged, then that might explained why they were not able to fire up the other engines without steam. With RCCL we only carried 100 or so tons of Gasoil, so that may not have been enough to get them to San Diego.

I found these 12V46 engine seem to be prone to regular failure if not attended to with love and care, much more than other engines I've had experience with. On the bright side, they were some of the easiest engine to work on, with straight forward disassemble using standard tools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-tdsrqb_w&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/user/lebowsky200 ... dFu0KEL3DM

http://www.youtube.com/user/lebowsky200 ... 9btqy2qa1c
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by JK »

http://johnhealdsblog.com/2010/11/12/sm ... er-part-1/

Blog from the cruise director about the fire
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by The Dieselduck »

That's a pretty good write up. At least we get a good perspective of whats going on, at least as close as we can get to the major players. It would be great to read a similar account from the engineering side. At one point the Chief Engineer mentions that the main switchboard is toast. That's pretty serious, and usually removed from the alternator, so I assume there must have been some kind of power anomaly that caused the switchboard to be damaged. Strange that they did not have a separate switchboard just one common one; on the ships I have been on, there is separate switchboards serving separate services. Anyone can shed light on this ship's particular set up?
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by JK »

From the blog:
The only flames the squads had seen had been coming from the cabling but because the smoke was so thick we really had no idea what we would find.
He mentions a couple of times, it is the cabling that is burning.
What is also very surprising is that it appears that they had been using the elevators right up until the blackout went out. Or it may be just how the writer presents the story.

ETA: I spoke with a much more experienced co-worker and he enlightened me about the elevators. Given the amount of elderly and handicapped people on the ship, casualty rates would be higher if the elevators and ventilation were shut down.
This is alluded to when the blogger talks about crew members carrying people up and down the stairs and the Captain opening shipside doors. With the stress of the fire itself, the 8 decks of stairs would be too much for some of these passengers hearts.

Given that Panama will be investigated this accident, it will be interesting what the findings will be.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by jimmys »

When we look at the fact the cabling is burning we must remember it can burn from the inside or the outside and if the faulty engine on a diesel electric ship does not clear the switchboard we can have reverse power. With five other driven alternators to power number 5 alternator in which there is a crankcase explosion of the engine. Cabling does heat up drastically.
It is likely this is consequencial/sequential damage as is the crankcase explosion. It will be interesting to find the initiator in the wonderful 12V46. I consider it likely to be maintenance based as the engine is two years old and burning IFO 380.
Mr Healds opinion in his blog of Italian engineers is not in line with my own.
It would seem the Coastguard have called on the FederalGovUS NTSB to assist in the investigation. They are likely to have more idea than the Panamanian Authorities.

regards
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by The Dieselduck »

That's a very good point Jimmy, I had not considered that - reverse power. Of course this also represents a pretty major failure in protective devices. I like your other comments as well, about John Heald's comments, I too take that with a grain of salt.

I think the NTSB and USCG will offer a better perspective, but from past reports they usually are pretty good are carrying out drug testing and checking up security issues, but overall, the technical findings will be best offered by the manufacturer, if of course they are pressed to release that kind of information.

Carnival released this statement today...

Carnival Cruise Lines has cancelled voyages of the Carnival Splendor through the departure of January 9, 2011, to allow time for repairs following an engine room fire last week. The ship is scheduled to re-enter service on January 16, 2011.

Guests who were scheduled to sail on these voyages will receive a full refund of their cruise fare and air transportation costs, along with a 25 percent discount on a future cruise.

Carnival Splendor was towed to San Diego following the fire which occurred off the Mexican coast on November 8. A team from the U.S. Coast Guard, NTSB and flag authorities, along with Carnival’s engineers and technicians, is currently on board investigating the cause of the fire. Carnival personnel are being assisted by representatives of the shipyard that built the vessel and other manufacturers of engine room components in assessing damage and necessary repairs.

“We realize how much guests look forward to their vacations and know that they are very disappointed by this news. We too are disheartened that we are not able to fulfill the dreams of those who have entrusted us with their important vacation plans. We sincerely apologize to everyone who was scheduled to sail on these cancelled voyages and look forward to welcoming them aboard in the future. Now that we have a full technical team engaged in the assessment, we wanted to provide this information as quickly as possible,” said Gerry Cahill, Carnival president and CEO.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by jimmys »

I do not wish to go into the matters of reverse power at the moment but there can be a time delay fitted. The reason for this is that the breaker is a main propulsion breaker. Safe operation in normal circumstances cannot have the breaker tripping with a portion of reverse power. Lloyds rules are complex. It is a Lloyds ship.
Massive surges can weld the contactors and it will not break. We do not know if the engineers had tested reverse power when securing a main engine. Maybe secured and run up on an auto system.
The vessel I think is 10,000volts 60hz AC current 83,000KW and each diesel engine approximately 15000 KW. There will be a central synchronising panel even though separate switchboards, because to close an engine on to the bus bars you need to monitor both boards and bars.
I am just assuming this I have never seen the vessel. Difficult to design for a crankcase explosion.

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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by JK »

I was wondering the power rating of the vessel. Thanks for the info and welcome to the Forum.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by Big Pete »

I have been reading this with interest and so far I have not contributed due to my total lack of experience on large passenger ships like this.

However, I did have a problem with a clapped out old tanker which had twin V12 Pielsticks clutched into a common gearbox & CPP prop. We were happilly steaming along at full power and there was a oil mist alarm and shutdown on one engine. Fuel was automatically shut off that engine, but the automatic de-clutch failed, and so did the pitch shedding system. Consequently the other engine was trying to drive the prop at full pitch and the first engine at full RPM, all on its own, and became heavily overloaded.
There was a mechanical shear pin as a final overload protection device for the gearbox input drive and that functioned O.K (broke) and the engine went from being overloaded to no load instantly and overspeeded like mad!!
Next thing was the windings on the shaft alternator rotor were thrown out of their slots by the centrifugal force and made contact with the stator, there was a Catherine Wheel effect all over the engine room, followed by a total blackout and finally the second Engine shut down. Normality to blacked out, dead in the water in about 30 seconds. Made for an interesting day.

With regard to the recent cruise ship fire I can see that a crankcase explosion would cause the OMD to shut off the fuel to the engine, if as was previously mentioned, the reverse power trips on the switchboard did not operate, the alternator would run as a motor, and keep the engine running at full speed until it mechanically seized, or the reverse power trip operated.
I would expect the reverse power trips to be set up so as to have an inverse power characteristic. With diesel electric ships I have sailed with it was normal for the Mechanical Maximum continuous power rating of the prime mover to be 20% greater than the Electrical MCR of the alternator. The Alternator is usually rated for a 20% overload for 20 minutes, during which time the prime mover will be operating at 100% rated power. The overload trips will be set up to allow the alternator to run at 100% load for an infinitly long time, 20% overload for 20 minutes and then trip, and trip faster for bigger overloads, slower for smaller overloads. I can not remember the settings for the reverse power, but they will certainly follow a similar pattern, but usually the trips are faster and at much lower power levels.
Large modern circuit breakers are very complex and usually have an electronic module, in the breaker, to operate the tripping mechanism as well as a basic electro/mechanical mechanism. It could be that testing was limited to the electronic module and that the mechanical tripping mechanism failed.
I assume that there would also have been an electronic Power Management System for the generators, switchboard and major consumers, but I do not know if this should have done anything in this scenario.

I am afraid my Diesel electric experience is limited to Medium voltage and much lower powers, so I do not have the experience on these systems to make any further suggestions.

We will have to wait for some hard technical info to come out.
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Re: Cruise Ship Fire

Post by al2207 »

Did someone had any informations ( drawings ) of main switchboard on the cruse ship.
I think dammaged was caused by high voltage arcking after carbon contamination within main switchboard ; after all computer control failed there were no way they can restart manually generators. Even if the trend is to use 2 or 3 computer link togheter it do not provide real manual back up.
curious to see comments
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