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Anglian Monarch' Takes Cruise Ship in Tow
01 Jun 2006
Britain's National Contingency Plan for marine emergencies was tested in the early hours of the 6 May by a potentially serious fire aboard the 11,100grt cruise ship Calypso, with 708 people onboard. When the ship reported an engine room fire in the early hours of that Saturday morning, 16 nautical miles off Beachy Head in Sussex, the Coastguard Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centres at Dover and Southampton swiftly responded, providing a wide range of assistance.
As Calypso's crew members fought the fire with onboard C0 2systems, the passengers and other personnel were prepared for immediate evacuation. In the meantime two Coastguard helicopters were used to transfer an East Sussex Marine Incident Response Group fire team, an offshore medical team, MCA Surveyor and Coastguard liaison officer to the casualty. Anglian Monarch, the Coastguard tug on station in the Dover Strait, was tasked to assist, along with six lifeboats from the RNLI and one from France. Further assets were brought to readiness for use if required.
The fire was successfully extinguished by the C0 2system and the airborne fire fighting teams assisted the ship's personnel to carry out boundary cooling and essential checks.
With the arrival of Anglian Monarch, Calypso was taken in tow for Southampton where it was berthed at about 8:00pm the same evening.
The Cypriot flagged Calypso had been on passage from Tilbury to St Peter port in the Channel Islands when the incident brought the cruise to an untimely end. By the time the ship arrived at Southampton, arrangements were in place to repatriate the 462 passengers, reported to be mainly from a Dutch travel firm.
Fortunately this incident resulted in the fire being contained in the engine room and no injuries to passengers or crew.
Under other circumstances the pre-planned procedures used on this occasion could prove vital, as would the use of the newly designated Marine Incident Response Group (MIRG) fire-fighting teams. Such teams from Fire and Rescue services in Kent, Sussex and elsewhere have been trained, exercised, and deployed to shipboard incidents by helicopter for some years.
This deployment was however the first to be undertaken since the teams recently became part of the MIRG, formed to become an integral part of the United Kingdom's search and rescue response organisation.
The MIRG comprises 15 Fire and Rescue Service teams strategically located around the country. Each team is equipped with lighter, more compact equipment required when travelling by helicopter to the scene of an incident. The teams cannot only fight fires but also deal with chemical hazards and free trapped personnel. This new organisation, one of the first of its kind in the world, is the result of a major cross-governmental project involving some of the principal organisations behind the UK's civil emergency planning, supported by almost £3m of funding from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Department for Transport. The major change is that the teams are funded centrally rather than at county level to fit more easily into the national emergency response effort.
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