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tahqa

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  • Location
    Orlando, FL
  • Interests
    SCUBA, Cycling
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Royal Caribbean
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Southern Caribbean

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1,000+ Club (7/20)

  1. From the Washington Post Article... The Justice Department filing, though, offers a far more detailed and plainspoken account of maintenance issues on the ship and what caused them, as well as a timeline of the minutes before the Dali hit the bridge. All four backstops meant to help control the ship — the propeller, rudder, anchor and bow thruster — failed to work in the critical moments before the crash because, the department alleged, the Dali was unseaworthy. The department alleged that about four minutes before the Dali collided with the Key Bridge, its key “number 1” electrical transformer tripped and cut power. That transformer, according to the filing, had long suffered the effects of heavy vibration, which is known to cause systems failures. But rather than fixing the problem, the department said, the ship’s owner and operator “took a Band-Aid approach.” “They retrofitted the transformer with anti-vibration braces, one of which had cracked over time, had been repaired with welds, and had cracked again,” Justice Department attorneys wrote. “And they also wedged a metal cargo hook between the transformer and a nearby steel beam, in a makeshift attempt to limit vibration.” The Justice Department alleged that vibration problems on the ship were “not isolated.” A former chief officer reported they were shaking loose the ship’s cargo lashings, and engineers reported they were cracking equipment in the engine room, according to the filing. Those “heavy vibrations” had been reported to Synergy, according to a prior Dali captain. When the number 1 transformer failed on March 26 — plunging the crew into complete darkness — power should have transferred automatically to a backup “number 2” transformer within seconds, Justice Department attorneys asserted. But that automated function, they wrote, had been “recklessly disabled,” leaving engineers struggling in the dark to manually reset tripped circuit breakers, a process that took a full minute as the ship surged closer to the bridge. At the same time, a separate emergency generator should have turned on automatically and restored power steering — a backstop that maritime regulations require to kick in within 45 seconds of an outage. But it did not activate for well over a minute, Justice Department attorneys wrote, causing “more time wasted.” Once power was restored to the ship’s steering system — known as the helm — a Maryland state pilot who had come aboard in port began issuing orders to steer the ship away from the bridge support beams. But the failed transformers meant the Dali’s propeller still was not working. Then the ship lost power again. This time, the Justice Department alleged, the cause was an improper fuel pump, called a “flushing pump,” which the attorneys said the ship’s owners used “to save money and for their own convenience.” “It was not designed to recover automatically from a blackout, a critical safety feature of the proper fuel pumps that the DALI should have been using,” department attorneys wrote, calling the choice to use a flushing pump instead “grossly negligent.” After both blackouts, the pilot resorted to the left anchor, giving an emergency order to release it in hopes of forcing the Dali away from the bridge, according to the filing. But the anchor “was not ready for immediate release in an emergency, as required by law,” and by the time it dropped, it was too late, the attorneys alleged. In a separate, “last-ditch” attempt to avoid a crash, the department said, the pilot ordered the crew to apply full power to the ship’s bow thruster — a propeller on the front of the vessel that helps it move side to side. But when nothing happened, according to the filing, the pilot was told the bow thruster was unavailable. At 1:28 a.m., the ship slammed into the bridge. Six people were killed and two were injured as the roadway fell into the river below, cutting off the Port of Baltimore’s shipping channel for months as the state and federal government worked to recover the bodies of the construction workers and remove massive chunks of debris. The Justice Department said in the filing that Grace Ocean and Synergy mismanaged the Dali and failed to train its crew, adding that during a recent inspection, officials found “loose bolts, nuts, and washers and broken electrical cable ties inside of both step-down transformers and electrical switchboards.” The ship’s electrical equipment “was in such poor condition that an independent testing agency discontinued further electrical testing due to ‘safety concerns,’” the filing said.
  2. This seems to be happening to me also. I logged into the website and my September cruise is missing. It's also not showing up in the app either. 😕
  3. From a Washington Post article... Carnival said in a statement that the weather was unexpectedly strong, causing conditions that were rougher than forecast, but that its fleet operations center team, which relies on outside meteorology resources for itinerary planning, “coordinated to keep the ship in its safest location.”
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