How Do They Fight A Fire On A Massive Cruise Ship?

-------------------ABOUT THIS VIDEO-------------------
In this video, we take a look at the fire that occurred on the Star Princess in 2006.

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★ CONTENT
This video contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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All content on this channel is provided for entertainment purposes only. Although every effort has been made to ensure the content is accurate and up to date, it remains the responsibility of the viewer to determine its accuracy and validity. The content should never be used to substitute professional advice or education.

[Operngeist]

It's nice to see incidences were the emergency was properly dealt with and safety measures were correctly implemented and working even though this was a fire they weren't designed for. We often only hear of the incidences were everything went wrong and people died, but we don't see the ones were things went right.

[sedrickblake]

usually with stories like this there is some egregious error on the part of staff or command in response to the disaster but in this case everyone did exactly what they were supposed to which is great to see

[Deltarious]

I don't know why but I always find it *extremely* satisfying to hear about emergency response scenarios where contingencies and backups are activated and a concrete and decisive plan is executed and powerful, effective steps are taken that actually work as designed

[paulgibson]

The crew deserves a lot of credit here for handling the situation in a calm and professional manner, too often tales like this end badly because the correct procedures aren’t followed or done so badly!

[vizender]

For those wanting to know more about Highfog, it’s a pretty specific way of stopping a fire on a boat. It’s and extremely high pressure system, at around 100 to even 200 bars, which pulverize the water droplets into a thick mist. This, in a way, does 2 jobs at one time :
Cooling the air and surfaces down, just like regular water fire systems
Stifle the fire thanks to the mist blocking the oxygen access and trapping CO2 (just like CO2/foam fire systems)
However, the big limitations of this system in ships, is that it uses unsalted water, so contrary to the fire lances that get their water directly from pumped sea water, Highfog systems are bound to run out of water in their systems at one point when used continuously.

Edit : As someone asked about if human could breath under a working Highfog, the answer is yes. While the Highfog does choke the fire, it does not for humans, the reason being that a fire consume much more oxygen than us. In the air, there’s about 20% oxygen. If you put a human in a coffin, he could manage to survive for dozens of minutes if careful. A small fire would go through the reserves in a matter of minutes.
So while the Highfog choke the fire, it still lets enough O2 go through the mist to allow people to breath, albeit uncomfortably.

[davidlees]

Balcony fires can be a major issue in apartment buildings as well because most fire suppression systems do not cover balcony areas.

[LastStar]

Amazingly, only one person died in this fire. Thirteen others needed to be treated for smoke inhalation. Really a testament to well-designed fire suppression systems and crew that's competent and decisive.

[KillerBot]

I was expecting an account of a marine disaster, but that actually sounds like a textbook response to a fire, one that started under non-ideal circumstances as well

[JoshuaBenitezNewOrleans]

Placing the wind of the starburt bow and applying the list we’re absolutely top notch captaining

[elmaxidelsur]

Please follow the instructions of the Crew if you are on a big and modern ship. Panic is a big of a risk as the fire

[barrypsax]

I joined this ship immediately after the fire as it was being repaired in Bremerhaven. Until balcony sprinklers were installed additional crew were brought to the bridge for Fire Watch of the balconies including while in port. If you search YouTube there are many videos of the fire and at the muster stations.

[John-Ginger]

Marine safety culture is still very impressive, identify a flaw oflr safety hazard and seek out methods of prevention, mitigation, containment and control.

[tpwo]

Very nice video! This Hi-Fog system was designed by a Finnish company, Marioff. I worked for them some time ago, and I saw how water mist is created in their lab. Pumps required to create such high pressure are loud, big and powerful :D If you want to see the system in operation there are a lot of videos on yt -- you can look for 'hi fog', 'water mist' etc.

I think that Marioff was one of the first on the market of high pressure water mist fire suppression systems, but there are a lot of competition these days. Anyway, it's great that such systems exist and can save people's lives.

[svqmbiv]

A big part of the reason I'm so interested in these sailing videos is because it seems like the entire sailing world watches and learns from incidences like these. They figure out what went wrong and then they figure out how to prevent it and implement it.

[Capybara-ol]

I work as ship crew (non-passenger facing, meaning I don't directly deal with passengers, I'm one of the people hiding in the bridge :P) on a cruise ship. My adrenaline was going as you described this and I ticked off each box of "they did this right" as you went through it.

The biggest thing that surprised me was the Deputy Captain remembering the master switches. I'm in charge of crew training on my ship (technically it's not in my job description, but I'm more effective at it than the person who's job it actually is. That may or may not be because of this channel...), and during every fire drill I have to remind someone to hit the switches.

[JH-lout]

I am glad to know the chocolate was OK.

Jokes aside, its good to know that the measures taken by the captain and crew could avoid a catastrophy. These were not professional fire fighters but sailors and service crew who had undergone mandatory firefighting training. It takes a lot of courage and dedication to put on breathing apparatus and go searching for survivors in zero visibility, potentially risking your own life.
These crew members are heroes and should be recognized as such.

[crezychameau]

After seeing so many disasters on the channel Plainly difficult, most of them happening because of negligence and greed induced malfunctions, it is really satisfying to see one that actually was contained, and dealed with correctly because of proper crew actions and proper equipment !
I know it's probably the wide majority, but things going bad are much more documented than things going right, so for once, I'm happy to see an unfortunate event actually ending right :)

[bokane]

I remember the welders setting the high fogs off constantly in the engine room on the QE. It was welcomed though when it was over 50c heat

[ReelVibes]

Great video. Love your content. May I suggest not ending your videos abruptly? A lot of people watch YouTube in their TVs and it's not easy to like a video after it ends. Having an end of video message like "thanks for watching, please like, subscribe, etc etc" followed by a few seconds of staring at an end credits screen would give people more time to like and subscribe. Sometimes we're so enthralled with the video we don't think to like it until it's over.

[TheeohnM]

Your ability to illustrate and explain these things is incredible!