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Fire on Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas

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Old May 27, 2013, 2:53 pm
  #1  
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Fire on Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas

From a Facebook post today

Royal Caribbean International

We have assessed the damage to Grandeur of the Seas and have made the decision to cancel the remainder of this voyage. We are currently arranging flights for all guests onboard to return to Baltimore, Maryland tomorrow. Guests on this sailing will receive a full refund of the cruise fare as well as a future cruise certificate. Information about upcoming sailings onboard Grandeur of the Seas will be posted as soon as it is available.




While en route to CocoCay, The Bahamas, the ship experienced a fire in the mooring area in the aft of the ship at approximately 2:50 a.m. ET. The fire was extinguished at 4:58 a.m. and the ship was redirected to Freeport for further evaluation. In an abundance of caution, the Captain mustered all guests to their assembly stations during the incident. Guests were released from their muster stations at 6:56 a.m.

Read more: http://fox43.com/2013/05/27/grandeur...#ixzz2UWpNdfuD
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Old May 27, 2013, 5:20 pm
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Originally Posted by cordelli
While en route to CocoCay, The Bahamas, the ship experienced a fire in the mooring area in the aft of the ship at approximately 2:50 a.m. ET. The fire was extinguished at 4:58 a.m. and the ship was redirected to Freeport for further evaluation. In an abundance of caution, the Captain mustered all guests to their assembly stations during the incident. Guests were released from their muster stations at 6:56 a.m.
This is one reason I'm very glad that the line I normally cruise with (Princess) doesn't muster standing outside at the life boats. From what I've heard about this incident, these passengers spent a long time crammed in tight standing out at the lifeboats, and really there was no reason they needed to be out there.
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Old May 27, 2013, 6:33 pm
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he May 31st sailing of Granduer of the Seas has been cancelled. All booked guests will receive a full refund of the cruise fare as well as a 50% future cruise certificate. We will provide an update regarding future sailings on Grandeur of the Seas by the end of this week.
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Old May 27, 2013, 10:17 pm
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Oh, wow! I cannot not believe that. Why it has happening? I wasn't sure why. They have to fixed the air condition. No one who responsible for this. Unfortunately for those passengers who stuck in Bahamas. Those passengers will fly back home. The entire cruise ship will have to be repair. It wasn't damaged at all? The coast guard will have more investigate. That's why I haven't been on the cruise ship for a long time.
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Old May 28, 2013, 6:13 am
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I would speculate that at least the 5/31 and the following voyage will be cancelled. Black smoke on a white vessel can make things appear worse than they really are, but only time will tell how much they have to do to bring her back to sailing shape.
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Old May 28, 2013, 8:56 am
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They said they will announce later in the week if they are going to have to cut any more cruises. Apparently, they do a good portion of their communications with the press via Twitter, which is a great use of the medium.

They are at RoyalCaribPR

They are being praised for the way they have been so forthcoming about it all to the press, sending out their PR team quickly to meet with the passengers, releasing pictures of the ship right away, etc.
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Old May 28, 2013, 9:07 am
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Now I know why the Celebrity Reflection confiscated our portable iron during embarkation for our recent voyage out of Civitavecchia.
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Old May 28, 2013, 9:21 am
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If you read Cruise Critic, someone had started a live from thread last Friday and has been posting updates throughout (apparently CNN even showed some of her posts - don't know if they had permission but oh well).

Basically, while very scary especially for those on lower decks at the aft, everything has been handled well so far.

The May 31st cruise is definitely cancelled as Cordelli posted above. I believe they need two days to get the ship back to Baltimore from Freeport, so that gives them 9 days to get the ship up and running in time for the next cruise. I'm sure they are making assessments now to see if they need to cancel more cruises - fingers crossed they don't.

But from the live thread I referenced above and the pictures, we know that the galley and the main dining room have suffered damage (all meals are being served in the buffet). We also know that the biggest lounge area has suffered damage (RCCL posted a picture on their Twitter feed of Adam Fain looking out one of the damaged windows from that lounge - from the outside, this is the area with 4 large missing windows). There is damage to some staterooms at the aft. And that's just the public areas, who knows what damage there is to crew only areas.
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Old May 28, 2013, 12:07 pm
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I'd be shocked if this only canceled one cruise.

Looks like Delta's doing several of the charter flights. Also a couple of charter airlines (quite frankly, if I was on that ship and told that my flight back was on Omni Air I'd refuse and tell them to put me on a real airline. My one flight experience with Omni was not something that I have any desire to repeat.).
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Old May 28, 2013, 5:03 pm
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It's good that nobody was injured. This just goes to show that these kinds of incidents can happen on any line. The only things which make this less of an event than the Carnival Triumph incident are the fact that the fire wasn't in an engine room and the proximity of the ship to land.

The four hours at muster must have been awful for the passengers, and the evacuation from the aft-most rooms on deck 3 in particular must have been pretty scary.
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Old May 29, 2013, 2:32 pm
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Royal Caribbean International
Due to the damage caused by the fire it is necessary to cancel Grandeur Of The Seas next 6 sailings. The ship is expected to return to service with the July 12 sailing. Guests booked on cancelled sailings (5/31 – 7/5) will receive a full refund of the cruise fare as well as a 25% future cruise certificate. A dedicated telephone hotline has been established for guests on these sailings. Guests should call their travel agent or 1-888-824-0012 in the U.S. and +1-408-916-9000 internationally. Or for live updates visit our website http://bit.ly/18r5Tfx
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Old May 29, 2013, 2:43 pm
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I found it amusing that over at cruisecritic people on the RCI board were actually claiming that this is just cosmetic damage and that the ship would make it back in service in time for the June 7th cruise. Wishful thinking is a powerful drug.

"'Tis but a flesh wound!"
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Old May 29, 2013, 2:49 pm
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From the looks of it those passengers should consider themselves lucky the crew was able to put that fire out, borderline disaster in the making...
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Old May 29, 2013, 2:50 pm
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Originally Posted by timeo1
From the looks of it those passengers should consider themselves lucky the crew was able to put that fire out, borderline disaster in the making...
Agreed, I suspect that it wasn't far from becoming completely out of control.

The fact that the passengers were kept at muster for so long and that the USCG asked Carnival Sensation to stand by to take on passengers if necessary further indicates that they weren't sure they were going to get it extinguished.
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Old May 29, 2013, 3:00 pm
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I don't think they were necessarily all that close to be in serious danger of it spreading. These ships are pretty decently zoned with fire bulkheads to help prevent the spread of a fire. But yeah, there were some pretty optimistic people in that thread that honestly seemed to think that the ship would be ready for the June 7th cruise. My personal estimate looking at it was that it was probably a month minimum, so July 12 doesn't surprise me.

I found the guy that said that it's only things like winches back there and those are made of steel so it shouldn't be a big deal to get those working particularly amusing. Yeah, the winch parts are probably steel, but electric motors don't take real well to fire, and I doubt you can run down the street and pick up a few winches for handling those lines at the corner store.

(Quite honestly, I also wouldn't be surprised if there's something of a labor shortage for this type of work too, after all, it's now sitting right next to the Carnival Triumph, which probably needs a lot of the similar types of people for the work going on there.)
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