Fire on Board the Liberian Passenger Ship Ecstasy, Miami, Florida ...

Analysis 58 Marine Accident Reportraised position, which left a gap between the rollers and the entry housing to the adjacentexhaust ducts. This gap allowed the fire to spread into the roller exhaust ducts, which wasevidenced by heat damage to the paint on the exhaust ducts. In addition, the roller exhaustducts contained several inches of burned debris.Postaccident examination of the mangle blowers revealed that they were cakedwith partially burned lint and wax. The impeller on the aft fan had disintegrated, leavingrust-colored metal flakes imbedded in the lint and wax. The absence of an operational fanin this duct allowed more lint to accumulate in it than in the forward duct, which resultedin the aft duct sustaining far greater heat damage.In addition to the damage in the mangle’s vertical exhaust ducts, investigatorsfound 2-3 inches of burned debris in the main ventilation duct above the machine. <strong>Fire</strong>damage was present throughout the mangle exhaust duct system of the Ecstasy, indicatingthe fire probably proceeded through this system into the air conditioning room where itspread through the plenum exhaust ducts onto the mooring deck. The fire then ignited lintthat had been exhausted to the mooring deck and that had become imbedded in themooring line. The burning lint, in turn, ignited the mooring lines, which fueled a large,intense fire that raged for more than 2 hours, damaging deck areas above, forward, andbelow the mooring deck. Hot gases and smoke transferred from the mooring deck to otherareas of the vessel through the air conditioning ventilation system before bridge personnelsecured the system. The ventilation supply intakes for the stern thruster room, which arenext to the laundry room’s exhaust plenum on the mooring deck, transferred smoke andheat from the fully developed fire through the vent ducts into the stern thruster room,causing extensive damage there. Hot gases and smoke traveling through the ventilationducts also caused extensive heat damage and sooting in the steering gear rooms, severalpassenger cabins on decks Nos. 4, 5, 6 and 7, and the laundry crew galley. The injection ofsmoke and fire gases from the mooring deck fire into the intake systems caused the almostsimultaneous activation of smoke detectors on four different decks.Based on the amount of burned lint debris on the Ecstasy, investigators examinedthe main laundries of other Fantasy vessels and found large lint accumulations in theirlaundry exhaust systems, particularly the mangle exhaust ducts next to and above themachine. On one such ship, the Fantasy, the chief engineer stated that he had initiated aprogram of cleaning the exhaust ducts and plenum about every 20 days after he hadexperienced a problem closing a damper and had found the ducts clogged with lint.Although crew personnel had cleaned the ducts 4-5 days before the Safety Board’sinspection, investigators found several inches of lint buildup in the dryer ducts and theplenum. They also found that the mangle duct contained about ½ of an inch of lint and wascoated with a waxy/oily substance. On the mooring deck, investigators found that lintexhausted through the ventilation system had settled on and become imbedded in themooring lines.Flammability tests of lint collected from the sister ships showed that the materialwas ignited easily by a spark and burned for several seconds, leaving little residualmaterial behind. Therefore, the large lint buildup in the exhaust vents and the ventilationsystem represented such a hazard that a fire might have occurred even if the fitters had