Photo courtesy of Carnival Cruise Line
No injuries were reported after a fire erupted in the engine room of Carnival Liberty while docked at St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands late Monday morning. A U.S. Coast Guard tweet and a Facebook statement by Carnival confirmed the incident.
The cruise ship, which can hold up to 2,974 passengers and 1,160 crew according to Carnival's website is on the second day of a seven-day Caribbean cruise that left San Juan, Puerto Rico yesterday.
Since Liberty was docked, all guests were able to disembark the statement said. Coast Guard fire crews responded and are now making sure the blaze is completely out.
A cause for the fire has yet to be determined and updates will be forthcoming.
The last reported cruise ship fire occurred late July on the Royal Caribbean ship Freedom of the Seas. That blaze broke out in a mechanical space and caused a plume of smoke to pour out of the vessel. Cruise line officials said the flames were quickly extinguished by the automatic fire suppression system.
A few months after the sinking of the Costa Concordia in 2012, Conde Nast Traveler presented the four most common things that could go wrong on a cruise ship and fire was included on the list. According to the publication, over 70 fires have occurred on cruise vessels in the past 20 years, occasionally causing fatalities and injuries. "Mechanical problems" are cited as the prevailing cause for the blazes.
The good news, according to Conde Nast is the extensive preventative measures, and how history has proven that "fires on ships are almost always contained and are rarely fatal."
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