The incident:
On 15 November 2017, WORLD CALIMA left Helgoland with a crew of 5 and 11 technicians, who were to disembark at three different windfarm installations. After approx. 90 minutes, WORLD CALIMA arrived at the first wind turbine.
When the first group of three technicians had disembarked, WORLD CALIMA proceeded to the next wind turbine in the same area, where another group of technicians disembarked. When the master reversed the engine to get away from the wind turbine, the mate and the master observed a fire in the engine room on the CCTV.
The alarm was raised and the remaining eight technicians assembled on the foredeck and donned immersion suits. The technicians were quickly evacuated to a nearby rescue vessel from the German coastguard in case the fire should become more critical and, for example, spread to other parts of the engine room and the rest of the vessel.
The master quickly decided to release the vessel’s CO2 system from the bridge and to cool the external accommodation bulkheads from the outside by means of water from the vessel’s fire hoses.
When the master had activated the remote control lever for the CO2 installation, he could neither see nor hear whether the system had been released. Therefore, the mate went down to the CO2 room on the afterpart of the vessel and activated it manually by pulling a wire directly connected to the valves on the bottles.
Because the engine room was filled with smoke, the crew could not monitor the development of the fire in the engine room by means of the cameras.
Lesson Learned:
1. Ships constructed of aluminium are especially vulnerable to fire because the ship’s structure is quickly eroded by the effect of heat, and minor fires may quickly develop into an uncontrollable emergency. Therefore, it is decisive that an early decision is made to evacuate the technicians and the crew, though this decision may expose the technicians to danger when they are leaving the vessel by means of ladders or jumping into a liferaft.
In this accident, the technicians were prepared to act fast. They could easily don the immersion suits and evacuate quickly to another ship in the vicinity. This was the case because they were not considered ordinary untrained passengers, but had instead acquired detailed knowledge about the on-board emergency procedures, which turned out to be effective. Because of this, the crew could quickly focus their resources on fighting the fire.
2. The remote-releasing of the CO2 installation on board was impeded by the fact that it had not been possible to train the practical aspects of its use. Therefore, the training was based on ideas about how the system would function in a real emergency. Furthermore, it was feared that the system would be activated unintentionally. When the system is operated in stressing circumstances, the risk of incorrect operation will increase, and the consequences hereof may be serious because time is of the utmost importance in connection with fires, especially on board rather small aluminium vessels.
In this fire, it was expected that it would be evident whether the system had been activated. Since it was not clear whether the system had been activated, it was necessary to open the door to the CO2 room and to release the system locally. Releasing the system locally without being equipped with a fresh air breathing apparatus is, however, connected with a considerable risk because a suddenly arising leakage may have fatal consequences.
Therefore, the CO2 system must not only be accompanied by an intuitive manual, but also be accompanied by information stating what is expected to happen upon activation. Furthermore, the fire fighting strategy must contain information about the actions to be made following use of the system.
Actions Taken:
- Install a sound/visual system that shows the crew when the fixed CO2 system has been activated on the bridge
- The operations and the HSEQ manager visit all vessels in our fleet to evaluate the feasibility in removing some of the fixed installations. This will allow us to remove as much flammable material as possible from the engine room.
- Thermography measurements of control boxes has been added as a task to the planned maintenance system.
- A Fire Hazard campaign will be rolled out during Q1 2018.
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Source: DMAIB
