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Following the Boreal’s November 17, 2015
engine room fire, French maritime authorities have recently released an incident
report concerning the Ponant vessel.
 The
fire was due to a clogged fuel filter element, which was disassembled under
pressure by a crewmember and thus started leaking fuel.
A fire broke out immediately around third diesel generator’s “turboblower” and
rapidly spread, via cabling, to the upper decks of the engine room.
According to the report, the midnight engine room fire spread quickly, leaving
the ship dead in the water without propulsion – but with emergency backup power.
The water-mist fire extinguishing system triggered automatically, but was not
strong enough to prevent the fire from spreading along bunched cables.
(Le Boreal - Returned to Europe for repairs - click to enlarge)
The crew had the fire under control shortly after, but the powerplant was out of
commission. With the vessel drifting towards the coast, the captain made the
decision to drop anchor and evacuate passengers and almost all crewmembers with
the support of the Royal Navy and sister ship L’Austral, which was in the area
at the time.
The ship was on an 11-day Antarctica cruise at the time, with 347 people onboard,
including 194 passengers of which there was a group of 90 Chinese. |
