How can a mega cruise ship lose all power to not power even toilets?

[JEDI]

http://ireport.cnn.com/blogs/ireport-blog/2010/11/11/overheard-on-cnncom-cruise-blues?hpt=C2

a full Carnival Cruise ship has engine fire, and loses all power.
all rooms in the dark for ~1week, and no working toilets. LOTS of unhappy passengers

WTFStarTrek? no backup generators to support basics?

all the eggs in 1 basket? not have 2 engine rooms just incase something happens?

surprised this didnt happen sooner?

 

[sdifox]

err, diesel electric... the diesels drive generators.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

all the eggs in 1 basket? not have 2 engine rooms just incase something happens?

Yeah, seriously. If the power supply for my computer fails, I can just reach into the closet and get another one. Same thing with engine rooms.

 

[mmntech]

I was on the Carnival Victory back in 2003 when the ship had an engine failure. They did get it going overnight but we had to miss one of our ports. They compensated by taking us to the Bahamas for a day since it was on the way back to Miami.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

a ship with 5,000 people on board would still need a LOT of power for just the basics.

 

[lxskllr]

I heard on the radio they had backup generators, but maybe the power they provide is minimal.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Most likely the power the backups provide is for essentials like radios and stuff. Having working toilets and air conditioning isn't a "necessity" in a emergency situation. Just sit on the upper railing and hope the wind doesn't blow it right back up.

Though I'm surprised they didn't have any means of making fire or anything with heat. Hell I would've rigged up a solar cooker or something.

 

[Jmman]

This happens a lot more often than you would think. Probably once every couple of years.

 

[maddogchen]

your on the ocean, they expect you to piss into the sea...

 

[RocksteadyDotNet]

Made in Italy.

I think I found the problem.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I love the ocean and sailing but have never really had any desire at all to go on a cruise.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

JerseyMare said, "I feel that Carnival is doing what they can for these passengers to make the best out of a bad situation. For these people to think they had it so bad, let them go back and watch videos of what the Chilean miners had to endure for MONTHS."

yes, i can see how being paid for a very high-risk profession is very comparable to paying lots of money for a luxury vacation

what a colossal fucking moron. only an imbecile would say "hey, at least your expensive, time consuming vacation wasn't as bad as toiling in some third world sweatshop. i bet you didn't even get malaria."

 

[ProfJohn]

Until we get some details information it is impossible to tell why they lost so much of their power and systems.

These ships use their engines to produce electricity and that electricity is used for everything else. With out electricity the ships are dead in the water and nothing else works.

My guess is that the fire may have damaged some fuel pumps keeping them from using any of the engines, or they decided for safety reasons to keep the engines off to risk further damage or fire.

BTW I worked on a cruise ship and have been in engine rooms. Very tight spaces with giant diesels taking up most of the space.

 

[Aikouka]

Supposedly my friend's uncle was on that ship (or so he told me the other day). I wonder if I'll get any interesting stories!

 

[olds]

I love the ocean and sailing but have never really had any desire at all to go on a cruise.

Ya, I don't get the allure. I'd rather be kicked in the junk and set on fire than go on a cruise ship.

 

[Bignate603]

Until we get some details information it is impossible to tell why they lost so much of their power and systems.

From what I've been able to find online they had a crankcase split open in the generator room which caused the fire which burned from 6:00 am until sometime in the afternoon. Even if they had backup generators that were undamaged I would bet that the majority of the electrical wiring all converges in on the main generator room. This isn't Star Trek where they just ask Scotty to reroute the power. If they can't get the power from the backup generators to where its needed you'll be sitting in the dark.

Like most vehicles, effort is made so that a failure doesn't result in lives lost but it is economically impossible to build one that completely eliminates all risk. The fire was kept inside the area where it started, passengers and crew never lost the option to board the life boats if necessary, and they were physically ok. From the information that we have on it right now there's no signs that they were negligent in their design of the boat or made any mistakes during the crew's response to the emergency.

 

[Modelworks]

It may have been about safety. On planes if there is electrical issues in one of the APU you don't just continue using power at the same rate even if the backup APU is working . You keep usage low as possible because what caused the first failure may cause further failures so minimizing the risk is the best policy. Most engineers design backup systems with the intent they be used only for backup and not run in place of the normal systems for long periods of time.

 

[Bignate603]

It may have been about safety. On planes if there is electrical issues in one of the APU you don't just continue using power at the same rate even if the backup APU is working . You keep usage low as possible because what caused the first failure may cause further failures so minimizing the risk is the best policy. Most engineers design backup systems with the intent they be used only for backup and not run in place of the normal systems for long periods of time.

AFAIK no commercial airplane has a second APU. The APU can function as the backup for auxiliary power in the case of a main engine failure, but there's not a backup APU. If the APU fails and the main engines can't provide power some airliners have a ram air turbine which can be used to provide backup electrical and/or hydraulic power for critical systems (ie controls).

Also, the failure on the cruise ship was caused by a crank case splitting. That's not something that would have happened because of some other issue upstream of the generators.

 

[vailr]

Maybe: a new "redundant safety" ship design could be dreamed up. Allowing the use of the swimming pool water for some gravity-fed toilets, that would still work even if there was no electrical power available.
Or: solar panels for powering microwave ovens for hot food.
Or: a pair of elevators that could operate by gravity, putting 9 people in the "down elevator" at the top floor, and 8 people in the "up elevator" at the bottom floor. Just the weight difference being sufficient to allow the pair of elevators to function.

 

[Bignate603]

Maybe: a new "redundant safety" ship design could be dreamed up. Allowing the use of the swimming pool water for some gravity-fed toilets, that would still work even if there was no electrical power available.
Or: solar panels for powering microwave ovens for hot food.
Or: a pair of elevators that could operate by gravity, putting 9 people in the "down elevator" at the top floor, and 8 people in the "up elevator" at the bottom floor. Just the weight difference being sufficient to allow the pair of elevators to function.

Or they could just leave the system as is, keep costs cheaper and ticket prices lower so people will actually go on cruises, and use tugboats every decade or so to safely return the rare boat that has an issue?

Seriously, spending millions on every boat that goes to sea to solve a problem that happened once without any life-threatening consequences is not realistic. Adding all of those extra systems would probably cause more problems than they solve due to increased chance of something breaking and increased maintenance.

 

[olds]

Or they could just leave the system as is, keep costs cheaper and ticket prices lower so people will actually go on cruises, and use tugboats every decade or so to safely return the rare boat that has an issue?

Seriously, spending millions on every boat that goes to sea to solve a problem that happened once without any life-threatening consequences is not realistic. Adding all of those extra systems would probably cause more problems than they solve due to increased chance of something breaking and increased maintenance.

Screw that. They should tow a cruise ship behind the cruise ship.

 

[Bignate603]

Screw that. They should tow a cruise ship behind the cruise ship.

They'll need to make sure the backup cruise ship is towing a cruise ship in case it breaks, too.

 

[olds]

They'll need to make sure the backup cruise ship is towing a cruise ship in case it breaks, too.

Now that's just silly.

 

[chusteczka]

As a former ship's mechanic and diesel engine operator, I am looking for solid information to comment on. Unfortunately, my experience is on navy ships and they seem to be designed differently with different terms from the Carnival ship.

Apparently, a diesel engine crankcase split in the aft generator room, causing an explosive fire. The aft generator room would be the engineroom for ship's propulsion. There should be a forward generator room with diesel engines for auxiliary power, the forward generator room would be the source for the ship's electricity.

Here are pictures of the diesel engines so you guys get an idea of the size of the engines. The diesel engines are the size of a large SUV or a U-Haul truck. Apparently, there are six of these engines onboard. Probably four propulsion and two auxiliary. They should have designed the ship with two aft generator rooms with each generator room holding two diesel engines. That would have provided the reliability necessary to keep the ship mobile in case of such a catastrophe.
http://www.wartsila.com/,en,productsservices,productportfolio,product,,3611923571543040,no,8000.htm

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2010/1...-cruise-ship-disabled-after-engine-room-fire/

The engines were manufactured by Wartsila. The Splendor is diesel-electric powered using six Wartsila diesel engines and has a power output of 63,400kW.

http://www.cruisebusiness.com/index...re&catid=48:top-headlines-category&Itemid=116

The ship has been operating on auxiliary generators throughout the day and engineers have been unable to restore additional power to the vessel.

Water pressure for the toilets would be provided by water pumps in the engineroom, seemingly the aft generator room. Water pumps are typically considered part of ship's propulsion. The auxiliary engines would still provide electricity to the refrigeration plants so the freezers and chillboxes should have remained operative. On a navy ship, food is cooked with steam. I am not sure what energy source they use on the Carnival ship to cook the food with since it seems they did not have boilers to produce the steam.

Typically, the ship's propulsion engineroom provides the electricity or steam for the water purifiers. It is possible they did not have the ability to purify water.

I would appreciate hearing more from ProfJohn concerning the layout of the ship. It seems odd to me that a single crankcase explosion would take out all four propulsion diesel engines or the whole engineroom. They should have put out the fire, gotten the other engines online, and continued on. So it is possible that a main fuel line was ruptured by the explosion, as ProfJohn mentioned. It seems odd to me that a new ship put in service in 2008 has such poor redundancy and reliability built into it.

 

[0roo0roo]

Most likely the power the backups provide is for essentials like radios and stuff. Having working toilets and air conditioning isn't a "necessity" in a emergency situation. Just sit on the upper railing and hope the wind doesn't blow it right back up.

Though I'm surprised they didn't have any means of making fire or anything with heat. Hell I would've rigged up a solar cooker or something.

still, its surprising there is no redundancy for the toilets... if you gotta limp home, its gonna take quite a while, that is for certain.

still i wonder what measures they had to do for the 5k people on board, feeding/watering the peeps musta been some nightmare. that ships going to need a deep cleaning from just the bo alone.