Somebody's got some splainin' to do.
Posted on 11/12/2010 9:45:32 AM PST by Kartographer
Their ship lost power after an engine fire Monday and was adrift about 200 miles outside San Diego and 44 miles off the coast of Mexico.
At that distance from land, it was out of cell phone range for much of the ordeal. The fire left the ship without air conditioning, hot water or hot food. The casino was closed and, for a time, so were the bars. The swimming pool was off-limits because the pumps wouldn't work.
Mark and Ginger Kalin and their 9-year-old daughter Parker were on the cruise as part of a magicians' convention.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Somebody's got some splainin' to do.
“endured”
The horror. The horror.
Even worse. Carnivale denied those people SPAM, even though it was available.
And some military paid with their lives, and limbs.
Exactly the way I feel. I never understood “the cruise”. We have had boats and fished far off shore in the Gulf of Mexico. There is nothing to see out there. Activities on the ship would be all there was to do.
I would rather spend a week at a luxury hotel in an area that I could tour around, find my own activities and come back to the hotel for the night. Even if the ship was going from port to port where you could get off and look around, there would still be too much time traveling from place to place.
Then you have that awful virus people catch on cruise ships, now this fire in the engine room. No thanks!
LOL! Good to see Chuck Heston in any case. A great American!
Yes, and what a gorgeous hunk of man was he as Ben-Hur!
Call me Cynical but ok ok I know but something isn’t right with this picture. I lived aboard for 6 years. Onboard were two engines and an engine for the generator. The ship had one engine malfunction. 5 engines and no power?
It sounds like the fire hit the electrical switchboard & distribution system. If that was the case then all the engines you had onboard wouldn't matter. A carrier has at least 5 switchboards. I have no idea about a cruise ship though as the missions are entirely different and likely the electrical system set up.
A switchboard fire in the three phase 460 volt switching system would definately shut down the A/C and ventilation system though. Main Lighting would run 110/220 volts.
>> It sounds like the fire hit the electrical switchboard & distribution system.<<
That sounds more logical. The reports of an engine fire sounded fishy. The fire suppression systems on any boat now are pretty good. I had a halon system that filled the engine room with halon almost instantly.
Then you have the air handling units themselves as well. Ours were a lot of smaller ones located in many fan rooms but was done that way to make sure priority systems got what A/C we had in the event of failures. Also it was to close off outside ventilation in event of nuclear or bio attack. A cruise ship though might be different in that respect and just have several big air handlers and a trunk system feeding the ducts. If that's the case you'd be looking at about a 100 HP electric motor for the fan or rather several.
my spouse said almost the same words except it was Viet Nam... your both so right...
Some of the lighting in the larger spaces might be 277V/1ph. It certainly is in commercial buildings.
Agree on the lighting in the cabin decks / areas being at 120V.
As a comment on an electrical event I was a little familiar with, some years ago here in Atlanta there was a case where an electrician working on / around a hot vertical bus duct apparently dropped a wrench such that it bridged the 480V/3ph bus duct (probably in the 2000A range, but it might have been bigger).
I say “apparently” because the resulting event killed the electrician immediately, vaporized 6’-8’ of the bus duct, and started quite a fire in the 15-20 story building this occurred in. Multiple deaths and injuries, an “evacuate the building and everyone goes home and starts looking for new office space” sort of fire.
I can just imagine how ugly a similar event would have been in a tight, enclosed environment on a ship.
I worked maintenance at the 1982 World's Fair. Aluminum balloons were just beginning to be popular then. Someone turned one loose and it went right into the substation on site. Power was off about half a day.
A nursing home I used to work in had a 2000 amp system. Halon has IIRC been declared not green friendly & prohibited so the state fire marshal required us to install a water sprinkler system over the switchboard.
That wasn't bad enough we had an emergency generator maybe 200-400 amps I can't remember. Enough for lights and one elevator to operate plus patient life support and the boilers. That generator had absolutely no means to be shut down from outside that room. It was in the same room as the switch. I've never seen anything so poorly planned and set up in my life.
I informed my boss in no uncertain terms that if that sprinkler popped off I was going to call him from a pay phone up the street. He said but the sprinkler will trip the utilities main outside. I said OK now what about the generator? Half the time when we had a power failure the transfer gear didn't fully engage the contacts and we had to knock them closed with a 2X4 in the dark. On my shift I was the only maintenance man there. I'd get the janitor to stand beside me with a board ready to knock me winding. I told him if I jerked suddenly to hit me as hard as possible and run.
On my ship, our berthing space was over the engine room. When the air conditioning worked, it was comfortable. When it didn't, it was 110 degrees and 100 percent humidity.
No booze allowed; we had beer call exactly twice with either two cans of Drewry’s or Carling Black Label (gag!).
The chief cook managed to ruin tomato juice!! The cook's food was so bad, we considered C-rations and freeze dried Long Range Patrol Rations as gourmet meals.
From March to October, I got off the ship to go ashore twice for a total of six hours. Normal work week was Monday to Friday with a half day on Saturday, On Sunday, the LST came along side to replenish supplies and restock us with ammo. Normal watch rotation was eight off and four on; I got out of the watches due to standing duty gun crew every third night — and we were always guaranteed a shoot at sometime during the night. We slept on deck next to the quad 40mm gun tub.
All you Carnival cruse weenies give it a rest. You're whining is pathetic. And no, I did not volunteer for this; I was a Naval Reservist doing my two years’ active duty. After we took the ship back to decommission her, I got transferred to SEAL/UDT boat support. Of my 24 month's active duty, I spent 15 months (two tours) in war zone. The second tour was even MORE primitive than the first.
If I wanted to travel by ship I'd book a place on a freighter instead and enjoy the solitude. These people were lucky in the fact if passenger so and so got on their nerves during the problems they could go back to their stateroom and be left alone.
The passengers were not as miserable in that time frame as the Engineers and deck crew likely were trying to get the ship back to port safely without further serious problems. No ventilation down in The Hole would be very rough times. It was a lot hotter than 60 something degrees the passangers could go to.
Despite the media hype they were safe where they were till they could get the ship towed in to port and San Diego given the problems in Mexico was a very wise choice too. Had they tried to off load the people at sea there a good chance some passengers would have gotten seriously hurt. Had the off loaded pier side in northern Mexico? Same thing on the trip back by land. Peoples vacation plans get altered or even ended every day by airlines. I'd rather have been a passanger on that ship three days than sitting in a plane on a tarmac for up to 12 hours.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
