Fire onboard Carnival Sensation last night

[BoDidly]

18 minutes ago, OCruisers said:

Wonder if we'll ever know the actual cause of the fire .......

Well there is a slight chance that it was human combustion . I actually couldn't tell you what the chances are that that would be what happen, but there has to be a margin somewhere , right ?

Perhaps some happy camper got dolled up on sunscreen and lit up a cigarette and then feel into a deep sleep while sitting on his Aft balcony  Cigarette feel out of his hands and hit that baby oiled (sunscreen ) up body and   ,

BOOM !  

Food for thought 

Edited February 11, 2019 by BoDidly

[Jmp4965]

The fire was in an interior cabin so the smoking on the balcony theory is gone. 

[silvercrikhix]

Knowing the cause would be great!  Hopefully, we’ll find out. No injuries would be awesome, too. 

‘It must have been a bit unnerving for everyone. It’d get all of my attention. Yikes!  

Yeah, um, I’d be scared. I lost everything one morning at 6am. It CAN happen to anyone at anytime. 

 

 

[chengkp75]

2 hours ago, BoDidly said:

I'm a non smoker too, never have been .  Never had anything to do with firefighting . But being a person that watched my childhood home burn down from a cigarette laid in a window seal may be the cause of that . No question about it ,it was a possibility and listed as such.

Spontaneous combustion , I read somewhere that humans even do that sometimes...….

Just a quick note from the National Fire Protection Association:

https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-Education/Resources/Safety-tip-sheets/OilyRagsSafetyTips.ashx?la=en

 

And another:

 

http://wyomingworkforce.org/_docs/osha/toolbox/oilyrags.pdf

 

Heck, I believe it was Carnival that had a fire last year or the one before, where someone draped a towel over a lamp for "atmosphere" and it caught fire.

[BoDidly]

2 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Just a quick note from the National Fire Protection Association:

https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-Education/Resources/Safety-tip-sheets/OilyRagsSafetyTips.ashx?la=en

 

And another:

 

http://wyomingworkforce.org/_docs/osha/toolbox/oilyrags.pdf

 

Heck, I believe it was Carnival that had a fire last year or the one before, where someone draped a towel over a lamp for "atmosphere" and it caught fire.

Well that does it for me , Mother in-law is staying home   

 

People hanging their clothes on the overhead sprinklers can cause a headache too. Yes I have had the displeasure of seeing a flooded cabin or two..

 

[NavarreCruiser]

9 hours ago, NoName said:

I agree....these old boats don't represent what I think of when I think of Carnival.

Those 8 ships represent more than 25% of Carnival's fleet, If sold Carnival would be a lot smaller.

[2wheelin]

If it was contained to one cabin, then that is the only place there was a fire and compensation should only be considered if it was through no fault of the occupants. Anywhere else would be a smoke event and the passengers should be thanking Carnival for the quick and professional response. Not seeking compensation.

[Jb10970]

We were in cabin u179 and we woke up about 3 am to an announcement outside the stateroom and then a bunch of people walking down the hall yelling fire get out!...was the most terrifying thing to wake up to. I opened the door and immediately saw smoke down the hallway toward the back of the ship..my wife ,son and I grabbed our life jacket and headed out toward our daughters room on the same side as the cabin that was on fire..smoke was a lot thicker there. You couldn’t see more then 100ft toward the back of the ship....we grabbed her and headed toward the front of the ship. We ended up going to the lido deck and we stayed there for about 2 hours..they got the fire out and we were able to return to our rooms around 5am.We have been cruising since 2002 and our platinum with carnival. This is the first and I hope last time we ever experience fire on a cruise ship!! One major issue we have with the way they handled the situation is the communication was not very good..I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to scare the entire ship but that left us guessing if it was safe to return to our room..I had to go to our room and make sure it was safe before we could go back.

[30scruiser]

17 minutes ago, Jb10970 said:

We were in cabin u179 and we woke up about 3 am to an announcement outside the stateroom and then a bunch of people walking down the hall yelling fire get out!...was the most terrifying thing to wake up to. I opened the door and immediately saw smoke down the hallway toward the back of the ship..my wife ,son and I grabbed our life jacket and headed out toward our daughters room on the same side as the cabin that was on fire..smoke was a lot thicker there. You couldn’t see more then 100ft toward the back of the ship....we grabbed her and headed toward the front of the ship. We ended up going to the lido deck and we stayed there for about 2 hours..they got the fire out and we were able to return to our rooms around 5am.We have been cruising since 2002 and our platinum with carnival. This is the first and I hope last time we ever experience fire on a cruise ship!! One major issue we have with the way they handled the situation is the communication was not very good..I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to scare the entire ship but that left us guessing if it was safe to return to our room..I had to go to our room and make sure it was safe before we could go back.

So glad you are all safe

[bury me at sea]

30scruiser, that had to be frightening.  I'm so glad you are all safe and sound.

[ontheweb]

5 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Nor does it rule out an ember from the ship's exhaust, someone accidentally catching something on fire, panicking and leaving (personally experienced on a ship), or a towel used to wipe off excess sunscreen, or spilled sunscreen, wadded up and left in the sun on the balcony spontaneously combusting (we are always aware that oily rags, in the heat of the engine room, let alone in the tropical sun, can spontaneously combust), since no evidence was found against any of these causes.  And what was the reason cited for a cigarette cause?  That a few days earlier, at a different location on the ship, that a butt had landed on a balcony.  If you read the investigation report, you'll note that the recommendations for remediation were to improve the fire safety of the balcony furnishings and structure, but not to recommend a ban on smoking on balconies.  I'm a non-smoker, but I've been around shipboard furnishings, and equipment, and shipboard firefighting for 43 years, and I've never experienced a fire started by a cigarette, and know how hard it actually is to get things to burn from one.

You did quote the investigative report as saying a cigarette was the "most likely" cause of the fire.

[robertlanajean]

Are there "spare rooms" on a full ship? I wonder if they keep contingency rooms available for things like this. Much easier to see on a plane that it's 100% full...  

[Shaggi]

While things definitely happen at sea, I’ve not experienced something like this in 32 cruises on them. The sound of people screaming fire and running down the hall with life jackets through a wall of smoke is not something you’d like to see outside of your door.  Being also at 3 a.m while it’s dark is frightening all in itself. (Why does fire only seem to happen at night on ships?😬)  thinking you might need to jump in the dark waters from a burning ship can give you a heart attack in itself! They contained it well but certainly no notification on their part to let us know other then a hallway announcement, not in our room, what if we were heavy sleepers? Being notified early would be smart, fires can get away from you so fast! We had a worker trying to tell us we didn’t need our life jackets! Really? Definitely not a plan in motion for this ship as everyone was just standing around not knowing what to do.  My adrenaline finally slowed down after a couple of hours once we were back in our rooms but at first from 0-100 you start shaking and I remember trying to dial my daughters room on the same floor but on opposite sides to tell her to get out and grab their life jackets because no one was going to tell them but us (they were right down the hall from the storage room that was on fire) and she had my 9month old grandson with her, but it took me a million tries to remember how to dial out in my awaken state of shock! If you have never been in this position then the comments are null! Trust me we thought we were dead! I believe Carnival needs to get together on what to do in case of emergencies, those drills are for us not them, save yourself, they aren’t going to!!

[puppycanducruise]

Very scary experience.

Glad the crew handled things well and no one was hurt.

[crewsweeper]

16 hours ago, Jmp4965 said:

The fire was in an interior cabin so the smoking on the balcony theory is gone. 

I'm hearing from a cruiser on board, that the fire was from an overloaded electrical outlet (surge protector?), and smoke got into the ventilation system, making it seem worse than it actually was.

 

So we can dispense with the cigarette smoking and towel theories, but be prepared to have extension cords and power strips taken away or prohibited on future cruises.

[chengkp75]

56 minutes ago, crewsweeper said:

I'm hearing from a cruiser on board, that the fire was from an overloaded electrical outlet (surge protector?), and smoke got into the ventilation system, making it seem worse than it actually was.

 

So we can dispense with the cigarette smoking and towel theories, but be prepared to have extension cords and power strips taken away or prohibited on future cruises.

Middle of the night, I'm putting my money on a surge protector rather than an overloaded power strip.  As I've said many times, a surge protector can be working 100% fine, until a ground fault anywhere else on the ship, completely out of the control of the person using the surge protector, subjects the surge protector to reverse voltage, and the semi-conductors in the surge protector fail into "thermal runaway" where they overheat even on very low current flow, and melt and burn the plastic surge protector.

[Georgie562]

On ‎2‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 6:04 AM, NoName said:

I agree....these old boats don't represent what I think of when I think of Carnival.

Believe it or not... those rust buckets are $$$ money makers for Carnival.

[Jmp4965]

1 hour ago, crewsweeper said:

I'm hearing from a cruiser on board, that the fire was from an overloaded electrical outlet (surge protector?), and smoke got into the ventilation system, making it seem worse than it actually was.

 

So we can dispense with the cigarette smoking and towel theories, but be prepared to have extension cords and power strips taken away or prohibited on future cruises.

The problem was on this ship there were only two plugs in your cabin one in the bathroom on the ceiling which was difficult to keep something plugged in and the other under the mirror in the main part of the cabin. The problem with that plug was it was under the framing of the mirror and you could only plug certain items in. They definitely need to upgrade their electrical on this ship. Or at least they should of done it when they refurbished it. 

[jimbo5544]

16 minutes ago, Jmp4965 said:

The problem was on this ship there were only two plugs in your cabin one in the bathroom on the ceiling which was difficult to keep something plugged in and the other under the mirror in the main part of the cabin. The problem with that plug was it was under the framing of the mirror and you could only plug certain items in. They definitely need to upgrade their electrical on this ship. Or at least they should of done it when they refurbished it. 

The same as on every Carnival ship except Vista and Horizon.  There is a reason they limit the outlets, and it has nothing to do with upgrading their electrical.  See post 47

[1stqtpie]

Surge protectors are a no no according to their lists of do's and dont's. I guess 1 slipped by?

[jimbo5544]

13 minutes ago, 1stqtpie said:

Surge protectors are a no no according to their lists of do's and dont's. I guess 1 slipped by?

Easy to happen 

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, Jmp4965 said:

The problem was on this ship there were only two plugs in your cabin one in the bathroom on the ceiling which was difficult to keep something plugged in and the other under the mirror in the main part of the cabin. The problem with that plug was it was under the framing of the mirror and you could only plug certain items in. They definitely need to upgrade their electrical on this ship. Or at least they should of done it when they refurbished it. 

Regardless of how many outlets are in the cabin, the use of a surge protector is a danger that has nothing to do with the ship's wiring system and its age.

[Elaine5715]

26 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Regardless of how many outlets are in the cabin, the use of a surge protector is a danger that has nothing to do with the ship's wiring system and its age.

But you know how it goes, those guests blame the stewards for not telling them when they see one.

[Elaine5715]

2 hours ago, 1stqtpie said:

Surge protectors are a no no according to their lists of do's and dont's. I guess 1 slipped by?

People bring them because that is what they have at home already and aren't interested in getting a special one just for a cruise.  If found once, they hide them better.  These people then blame the crew for not preventing their use.  

Edited February 12, 2019 by Elaine5715

[NightOne]

6 minutes ago, Elaine5715 said:

The way is works is if they don't have sufficient evidence of the cause, they can't state it as a fact.  

 

Exactly. So we agree. 🙂

 

I've looked at the Star Princess report too and the recommendation was not to ban smoking on balconies so you could infer that they didn't feel strongly enough about their theory to recommend that solution. However, just as they couldn't prove a cigarette was the cause their recommendations for remediation does not prove it was not. Therefore, we're back at square one:

 

No proof that a cigarette caused the Star Princess fire 🙂