"I... much... fear... trouble... with... the... fuselage... Frederick..."
Posted on 05/05/2006 9:16:28 PM PDT by HAL9000
And for those who have never toured an engine room, unless you are absolutely impeccible about your cleaning and maintenance standards, you are in a fire trap. You have oily equipment (and if you are lucky the lubricants that you buy will have a high flash point), lagged piping (good food for a class A fire), hot pumps, and tons of high voltage, high current electrical systems in an enclosed space. The standards that most people use for fires don't apply. A fire in an engine room can grow extremely fast.
For example, consider if you had an oily bilge fire (which is why you want to keep your bilges clean). The fire would climb the inside of the hull of the ship from the bilge by burning lagging and would be a multiple level fire in minutes. In worst case scenarios, the fire would eventually degrade the integrity of your steam boundaries or your watertight boundaries.
On an Aircraft, I always look for three things....
The closest exit, the location of the crash ax, and who I might have to climb over to get there....
Britain (England) is 5 hours ahead of EST
Well, please remedy the situation you apparently created, soon. We're going on our first cruise, to the Baltics, in August.
6-8 yrs ago, approx 800 people died on one of those 24 hr. Baltic ferry crossings from Estonia to Sweden-a German built ship!!
Hopefully they did not call the German Coast Guard
Don't count me in on the people who don't pay attention. I also go over the manual and count how many seats each way to the closest exit in case the cabin is full of smoke and visibility is zero. I also go over which of us is responsible for each child so we don't think the other has one of the kids, when no one does. Yes, I am probably weird, but it makes me feel a bit better...
Prayers for a successful evacuation...
I took all the briefings seriously, when I was aboard ship.
This isn't a local "ferry crossing". This is a seven-day cruise from Copenhagen to Stockholm, on a very well-rated cruise line. Ferries everywhere do seem to go down like stones.
"I... much... fear... trouble... with... the... fuselage... Frederick..."
Guilty, too. I also check out hotel exits upon check in.
That was funny. lol
While there probably are a few folks who specialize in it, aboard ship, every member of the crew is in the firefighting department once one breaks out.
Mayday = grave and imminent danger, as in about to sink, fire on board.
If the 1st call they made was a Mayday, the fire was not likely confined or under control, they would be looking to evacuate, and are requesting immediate assistance from the nearest possible source, including any other ships in the area.
http://www.tc.gc.ca/MarineSafety/tp/Tp9878/TP9878E.pdf
I was in a cruise ship crash. At daybreak off the coast of Copenhagen on trip from London to the Fjords, we cruised right smack into a Russian freighter that was crossing our path. We hit it at the stern side, at the engine room, pushing it around until it crashed into us, side to side. When it it us sideways our ship tilted hard, like it was going to capsize - everything in the cabin, including us, was thrown towards the wall. Then, luckily we didn't capsize, the ship rocked back and forth a little before correcting.
Everyone went above deck. We punctured a hole in the engine room of the freighter and it began to drift away listlessly, sounding its horns. We could see it was taking on water because the stern end of the freighter was sinking and the bow lifting up out of the water. Dozens of small craft began to appear, responding to the distress calls. Our ship sent the lifeboats to the freighter and brought their crew on board - but apparantly the crash killed 2 people on the freighter who worked in the engine room.
We steamed on to Copenhagen port and our 14-day cruise ended the morning of day 3.
That's a small ship, or, a big party boat.
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