This Is Not A Drill

I was hoping to write an intricate blow-by-blow piece about my first real emergency at sea. Fortunately the fire in the engine room was quickly contained, and all that happened was a ten minute interruption of my nap time. I was just getting to sleep when the alarm sounded. I didn't react at first since they've been testing the general alarm (sounds like a classic school bell) all season long, tweaking the volume here and there. So, I assumed it was a false alarm, until Captain Voss came over the loud speaker saying there was a fire in the engine room, all crew report to your muster stations, and all guests muster on the sun deck (top deck, far away from the engine room). My job in a fire emergency is to turn off all the galley fans, just in case the fire were to spread into my kitchen and blowers were to fuel it further. So just as Kevin, the night engineer, also sleeping, was throwing clothes and shoes on, adrenaline clearly starting to flow in him, I rolled out of my bunk to find my clothes and shoes. Quickly I donned them, and walked quickly to the galley stairs, technically a little afraid there might be some dangerous situation in front of me as I descended the stairs. The galley is on the same deck as the engine room, but there's a 40,000 gallon diesel tank in between the two rooms. Fire bad.

No problems though. I turned off the blowers and walked up the three flights of stairs to report to the Hotel Manager, Dani, on the sun deck. while Beth the Expedition Leader called out names of life-jacket wearing guests to check them off, Dani was checking in crew, assigning them to tasks as the bridge directed. Everything went according to plan, no hitches, no problems. Turns out the fire was electrical and started when the bow thruster was started up in preparation to dock at Bartlett Cove in Glacier Bay National Park. Eric the Chief Engineer was in the engine room when it happened and put the fire out quickly. Emergencies have a way of escalating however, so Captain Voss wanted to make sure if things did escalate that we were in a position to keep everyone safe.

Later that night Eric came into the galley to get some ziplock bags. He said the burnt parts kept smelling up the engine room so he was going to seal them in the bags. Apparently electrical fire doesn't smell too good (surprising that the usual diesel and exhaust smells are better than electrical fire). Personally, I figure Eric didn't want his nose to keep reminding him of the scary events from earlier that day.