These ships have significant fire safety problems. The fuel systems on these large diesels are frequent leakers. They have double wall fuel lines and covers over hot components, but the fuel can still ignite. The real problem is that all the engines and generators are in one main engine room. So a fire in that room takes down all the propulsion power and leaves the ship with only minimum emergency electrical power.
They should be required to have two independent engine rooms and control stations. The electric propulsion engines should be in separate rooms that can be run by either engine room.
If this type of fire happens in a more dangerous place..thousands could be lost.
I wondered about this from an engineering standpoint: Who puts all of their points-of-failure in a single room on a machine this large and complex?
That a fire, evidently not large enough to seriously damage the ship, would destroy all capability of power generation, including plumbing, propulsion and HVAC, is simply bad design. Wretched design.
I agree. That sounds like a very typical setup in any comparably-sized Navy ship. Having redundancy is essential to prevent such complete failures. Just imagine if this ship were DIW in the North Atlantic.
And for those who say it might be too expensive, I ask you, what will the cost be for Carnival to be towed, reimburse passengers, pay other expenses and fees, and re-build their name?