New services aim to ease fire protection equipment maintenance costs

Fixed fire-fighting systems play a vital role in the worst case scenario of a fire at sea. “As a former chief engineer, I took comfort in knowing that my ship was equipped with such a system, but gave it little thought on a day to day basis,” says Ken Potter, casualty consultant and managing director of Veritas Marine. “Marine accident investigators have seen failures of such systems when they were needed most. Because these systems sit hopefully unused for the life of the ship, latent problems caused by design, maintenance, or lack thereof, may not be noticed until the system is urgently needed.”

A classic case in point is a fire which occurred on board the Canadian passenger ferry Queen of Surrey back in 2003. The vessel suffered a diesel oil fire on its No 2 main engine. The engine room was evacuated and sealed, and CO2 gas was released. Although immediate failure of the CO2 distribution manifold allowed some of the gas to escape, enough reached the engine room to extinguish the fire.