Carnival Splendor stranding baffles marine experts

[nadinbrzezinski]

Source: USA Today

Marine experts are questioning whether there was a design flaw in the Carnival Splendor cruise ship, which lost power after an engine fire and was towed to San Diego on Thursday with nearly 4,500 people aboard.

A generator for an engine caught fire in the aft engine room 6 a.m. Monday, damaging a switchboard and "preventing the transmission of electricity to other machinery, including the propulsion motors," said Carnival spokeswoman Joyce Oliva.

The cause of the fire, which was put out by the crew and the ship's automatic fire-suppression system, is unknown.


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/cruises/2010-11-12-cruise-inside_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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Well I mulled about this two days ago since this bucket of bolts is about two years old.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. is it controlled by computers?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Could be, but this looks like a design flaw

the Italian yard is also on the hook, and as I said in that original post, how many of the other ships in the class have a problem.

[TheMadMonk]

3. Well duh. It's called a single point of failure.

The actual cause of the fire is not really the issue. Fires can start in the damndest of places for any number of reasons. The design flaw is the chokepoint in the wiring that rendered all systems inopperable.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. with the redundancies

there had to be more than one... but point taken.

But this will be an interesting story to follow as the legalities will be ahem... interesting.

Personally I would avoid the WHOLE class.

[Blue_Tires]

4. I was curious about this as well

I'd have thought something state-of-the-art like a new liner would have had a LOT of fail-safes and triple-redundancies built in...

IMO, this is pointing more and more to a human factor...

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. As is they were lucky

fires on board a ship are NOT fun. They could bring her down, so they were lucky.

[Submariner]

7. Not the redundancy one might imagine

One would think there would be lots of backup systems. Backup systems cost shareholders money, so they go with the minimum required by law, thus, usually accepted by Panamanian or Liberian registry.

On Navy ships and submarines, yes. On civilian fun boats set up with all the bells, whistles and light shows, not so much.

[Blue_Tires]

8. ok, i guess i was thinking more about navy ships...

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Actually they have more redundancy than they used to

this thing had two engine rooms, one aft one forward... it looks quite brutally honest like a really nasty design flaw. And if this is the case, it affects the whole CLASS, as you know. This also means that it will run Carnival a pretty penny and they might not be as lucky next time. And yes, they were lucky.

As to military they have many redundancies, you can thank Admiral Rickover for that actually and a few nasty accidents. especially with the sub service and the sub safe program.

Yes hubby is a retired chief, USN, Sub Service, and I got a sick interest in these things as an after effect of what I did for ten years.

Of course you want some corporate fascinating cover your ass blog?

http://johnhealdsblog.com/2010/11/12/smoke-on-the-water-part-3/comment-page-3/#comment-88264

Makes for fascinating reading. First call (on his first blog on this) was to corporate... now I asked him when exactly did they call the Port of Ensenada. I know they did... I know the Mexican Navy was there with more than just a tug boat... the AP raw footage is hilarious... but hey... I might get an answer or most likely a post deleted.

Oh and he is saying some fascinating things there.

[Historic NY]

10. I wonder if the water-tight doors are really-water tight? Amazing stupidity ...