Foreign-flag ships subject to US port state control will face stricter inspections guided by lessons learned from the November 2010 Carnival Splendor casualty. The US Coast Guard's (USCG's) scathing 15 July report on the cruise ship's engine-room fire and power loss revealed not just hardware defects, but lapses in crew and officer response. The quality and focus of onboard training emerged as a central issue. A pivotal lesson gleaned by the USCG review is that it's not enough to conduct required fire drills, it's also a matter of where they're conducted. In the case of the Carnival Splendor accident, investigators concluded that "the crew's lack of familiarity with the engine room hampered the fire team's efforts to locate and extinguish the fire and allowed for the further spread of both fire and smoke".
展开▼
