Emerald Princess apparently experienced a fire on Saturday, September 17, according to an onboard guest who reported it to the website of Professor Ross Klein, who often focuses on cruise ship mishaps. In turn, the report was published over the weekend by CruiseLawNews.com.
Travel Agent has asked Princess Cruises for a statement and will post it when it’s received.
The situation reportedly unfolded during the first day of a 12-day voyage around the Canary Islands from Southampton, U.K., to Las Palmas, Grand Canaria.
The passenger’s report mentions that about 11:30, the captain spoke on the ship-wide PA system and called the crew to their muster stations. So the guest himself turned on his personal “scanner” that had been pre-tuned to ship frequencies.
The guest reportedly heard a discussion about a fuel leak and fire in the engine room, the closing of water tight doors and fire fighters moving into position. Reportedly, smoke filled the engine room, the captain ordered the shutdown of several generators, and smoke was on the lower aft decks and Deck 16.
The scanner conversations indicated a fuel leak fire was suspected and the engine room fire suppression system was activated, the guest said. The guest then learned via the scanner that the fire source was discovered to be a generator air supply fan belt on Deck 16 near the funnels and not far from the Movies Under the Stars area.
After the fire was put out and the smoke was cleared out of the engine room, the Captain addressed the passengers and crew on Emerald Princess' ship-wide PA system to reassure passengers all was well and that a small fire had been extinguished.
After the captain concluded his remarks, scanner chatter revealed that the engine room clean-up from the fire suppression was under way.
The ship continued on its route and there is no indication of any crew or passenger injuries. Travel Agent is awaiting the Princess statement so stay tuned.