From left to right: Head of the Marine Unit Christopher Alexander, Chief of Port Police Kennedy Francis, SLASPA’s General Manager Keigan Cox, Acting Fire Chief Lambert Charles and Ministry of Health official Dr. Alisha Eugene addressing the media at a press conference held today in SLASPA’s conference room.
Acting Fire Chief Lambert Charles said the cruise ship fire challenged all agencies, including the St. Lucia Fire Service to respond adequately and efficiently.
“We don’t get a ship everyday and dealing with a ship fire is a unique situation. Ship fires are completely different from anything you would have witnessed for a while,” Charles told the media today.
According to him, the nature of the response is different from a normal fire. However all the agencies that includes: SLASPA, the Marine Unit, the Police Force and the Ministry of Health were prompt.
“A ship is a steel container and when a fire is in steel container, there is an extreme amount of heat and that would have an extreme amount of effect on anybody that would have been there,” he added.
Charles said the fire service arrived with two fire tenders at about 9:25.a.m, which were joined by another from Gros Islet, including two ambulances. Shortly after arriving, the crew of six headed by one sub-officer was able to make a determination that in fact there was a fire on the ship.
When the local fire service team arrived, the fire was being attended to by the ship’s crew. The cruise ship has 25 certified firefighters. “What we did is assist in a search operation and carried out an initial assessment of the ship,” he explained.
When the local team was able to determine that they were no other persons in the ship hole, it was flooded with carbon dioxide. “In doing so the carbon dioxide would be the final effort at extinguishing whatever fire that was in the ship,” he stated.
The acting fire chief said the fact that the ship’s firefighting mechanism was triggered, means that water was used to dampen the fire. However, instead of reducing the fire and heat, it let out steam and made it more difficult for the persons who were in the engine room.
Asked whether the fire service has the capacity to deal with a fire of that nature, Charles said the fire service can initiate “inward firefighting.” However, in terms of cooling the boundaries of the ship the fire service was not able to do that. The Marine Unit however has that capacity and assisted in that regard.
The fire service was not able to determine the extent of damages caused by the fire.