Last week we saw the towing of Carnival Splendor. An engine room fire disabled this mammoth ship, stranding it 71 kilometres off the shore of Mexico, 322 kilometres away from San Diego, where it had set sail.
Thankfully, no one was killed.
The situation could have been much, much worse. It could have made Titanic look like child's play.
Splendor had roughly 4,500 on board. Yes, it had lifeboats for all. It was relatively close to shore. And more importantly, it was relatively near a major port and naval base, with plenty of ships coming and going nearby. But if that fire became widespread, and if the ship had sunk in a hurry, it could have been a calamity of proportions as mammoth as the ship itself.
The problem is, what happens if you have to evacuate 4,500 people at sea, at one time? What if the ship had a list, and couldn't deploy half of its lifeboats?
Even if you can get everyone off, how many ships can respond to such a crisis?
A typical merchant vessel these days has a crew numbering only a few dozen. How do 36 sailors on a container vessel or supertanker respond to 4,500 people in lifeboats?
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter's entire purpose is rescue at sea. Yet a cutter is a bathtub toy compared to the Splendor. At best, it could take some aboard, and tow the remaining lifeboats in a daisy chain, if it was the only ship to respond.
Thankfully, one of the ships that was nearby, and responded immediately, was the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and the largest military vessel afloat. Yet the Splendor is bigger than even the Reagan. The Reagan displaces approximately 97,000 tonnes, while the Splendor displaces 113,300 tonnes. It is the second biggest in the Carnival fleet. The new Carnival Dream-class displaces a whopping 130,000 tonnes, making it a third larger than the Reagan. The dream has a capacity of 5,469 crew and passengers.
With its crew of 5,680, the Reagan is a ship that is capable of responding in such a massive crisis. But even with a dozen or so helicopters, if it had to respond to people in the water, there would be little it could do in a timely fashion. Each helicopter can only pull one or two people out of the water at a time. No, they would have to pull alongside, and push the 'eject' button on the bridge that deploys the rows upon rows of inflatable lifeboats that ring the flight deck.
And there are only 12 ships like the Reagan in the world, and a lot more mammoth cruise ships plying the waters. It's by sheer luck an aircraft carrier was nearby.
It's amazing how people can revert to being whiny in such situations. Most news reports focused on the people not having hot water or hot food, and the toilets getting full. Sounds pretty insignificant compared to the prospect of losing your life in a ship-wide fire.
Passenger Ken King told CNN, "The first part of it was OK. The food was great, staff was great."
But after the fire, he said, the food "actually got worse. The toilets didn't work for about 12 hours."
Perhaps the Los Angeles Times said it best in the lead to their Nov. 11 story: "It wasn't two months trapped in a Chilean coal mine, but for 3,200 passengers who'd paid for a luxury cruise, four days aboard a dark, cold ship was an experience to remember."
They keep building larger and larger cruise ships. Eventually, one will sink. Will we be able to respond to that many people?
It could have been much worse, I guess. During the Second World War, the RMS Queen Mary would routinely carry 15,000 troops on a run, relying on her high speed to protect her from U-boats. In that case, a sinking would have been disaster of unimaginable proportions.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
