FIRE IN LINER

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 113, 6 February 1941, Page 8

FIRE IN LINER

Engine-Room Ablaze

TWO-HOUR FIGHT Serious Damage Feared Serious damage by fire and water, the full extent of which will not be known till a survey has been made, was caused yesterday in a large overseas motor-liner berthed at the northern end of Aotea Quay, ■Wellington. The fire, which broke out suddenly in the ship’s engineroom, burnt furiously for a time and the vessel was enveloped in a dense cloud of grey smoke. It was two hours before the outbreak was quelled.

The cause of the lire is not known definitely. It is stated that a great flash was seen behind the ship’s oilfired donkey-boiler, and in a few minutes a fierce fire was raging. The outbreak occurred about 11 o’clock in the forenoon. Efforts to smother it by the engine-room foam extinguishers failed and the shore alarm was given at once. Six machines and a salvage van quickly arrived and soon several of the most powerful motor-pumps at the disposal of the Wellington Fire Brigade were hard at work, delivering sea-water through seven leads of hose into the ship’s engine-room. Tug Toia Assists. The "Wellington Harbour Board’s tug Toia steamed round at full speed and went alongside the ship. Her powerful fire-fighting equipment went into action to assist the shore brigade, and a great volume of water was poured into the ship’s engine-room. No flames were seen at any time from the wharf, but dense volumes of evil-smelling smoke poured from the ship’s funnel, engine-room ventilators and skylights. The seat of the fire was evidently in a fuel-oil compartment well down in the engine-room. The intensity of the heat was shown by the buckling of the shell-plating of the ship on the starboard side.

The fire-fighters were manfully assisted by the ship’s crew, a party of naval ratings and harbour board employees, and others. Preparations were made for the use of foam to smother the fire, but it was got under by the water, which is said to have flooded the engine-room to a depth of seven or eight feet. Oxygen apparatus was used by the firemen, specially in the earlier stages of the fire, and two men bad to be treated for the effects of smoke. Trying Experience. At one stage it was feared that two men had 'been trapped in the blazing engine-room, and an ambulance van was held in readiness to receive them in the. event of their being got out. They were the second engineer and one of his men. They had a trying time down below, but emerged safely after a time, little the worse for their experience, though one of them had been burnt about the shoulders by falling debris. Before the pumping of water began the doors in the ship’s watertight bulkheads were all closed. When the fire had been completely extinguished a start was made to cut holes in the ship’s shell-plating to admit large intake pipes to the engineroom for the purpose of pumping it out, a work in which the Toia was continuously employed throughout the afternoon.

The fire was a particularly unfortunate occurrence, as the ship had been in Wellington for some months undergoing major repairs to her hull structure. The full extent of the fire damage will not be known till a survey has been made, but it is believed to be fairly serious. Being an oil-engined ship, most of her pumps and other auxiliary machinery are electrically driven. ’ Thus, apart from the actual fire damage, the ship’s electric generators and motors will have suffered from the heavy flood of sea-water pumped into the engine-room.