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

Analysis 63 Marine Accident Reportinlets and outlets on the mooring decks. The Coast Guard, recognizing the safety issuesinherent in the design arrangement, has proposed that the IMO clarify the category formooring decks such as the type on the Ecstasy. The Coast Guard recommended that, forall new construction, a partially covered mooring deck be categorized as an auxiliarymachinery space. This categorization would not only require fire protection systems(detection and suppression) but also prohibit using the space as a ventilation terminus.The status of the Coast Guard’s proposal at IMO is pending. Regardless of whetherthe IMO does or does not agree to categorize mooring decks as recommended by theCoast Guard, any action taken by the IMO will not take effect immediately and may affectonly certain cruise ships. The Safety Board is convinced that all efforts should be madewithout delay to minimize the potential for fire on mooring decks that are incorporatedinto the vessel structure, such as the mooring decks on the Fantasy Class cruise ships. TheBoard recognizes that some mooring decks are used to store only anchors or smallcombustibles or both and, thus, might not warrant fire protection. To optimize safety,cruise ship companies need to examine their mooring stations for fire risk and determinethe need for detection and suppression systems. The Safety Board believes, therefore, thatthe cruise ship companies should, for existing vessels having mooring deck arrangementssimilar to Carnival Cruise Lines’ Fantasy Class ships, install automatic fire suppressionsystems on mooring decks that contain high fire loads and presently have no automaticfire protection.Ventilation SystemSOLAS II-2 Regulation 16 requires that the ventilation systems for high-risk areassuch as category A machinery spaces and galleys have an automatic fire damper where aduct crosses an A-class boundary to mitigate the spread of smoke and fire. SOLAS doesnot include laundries in the category of high-risk areas, despite the fact that laundryventilation systems can accumulate appreciable amounts of ignitable lint.<strong>Fire</strong>s in laundry facilities, including associated storerooms, can generatesignificant amounts of heat and smoke, frequently with lethal consequences, as the SafetyBoard discovered during its investigation of fires on board the Universe Explorer and theVistafjord. Based on its findings in these two accidents, which killed 6 people and injured72 others, the Safety Board determined that timely isolation of a fire is crucial tomitigating the effects of heat and smoke.The ventilation ducts in the Ecstasy’s main laundry had fail-safe fire dampers;however, if the ventilation system did not lose power, the dampers had to be shut bysomeone present in the area or by someone on the bridge. In this accident, if the fire in theoverhead had triggered the closure of the laundry fire dampers, the shutdown would haveoccurred several minutes before the bridge personnel secured the ventilation system,which would have resulted in appreciably less heat, smoke, and flame escaping from themain laundry and spreading to the mooring deck.