Carnival Breeze Fire Reports Overblown

[mercedes]

Earlier today, while sailing toward Dubrovnik, Croatia the emergency fire team was summoned to deal with an incident on the newest addition to the Carnival fleet, Carnival Breeze. The onboard announcement set the blogosphere all a twitter and soon there were reports all over the Internet about a fire onboard the ship. Carnival subsequently issued a statement clarifying that there had not been a fire but rather a malfunction in an air conditioning unit located in a crew area.

The website TravelAgentCentral.com, was among the sites and blogs that suggested that there had been a small fire onboard the cruise ship. In its initial reports, the website said that shortly after 8am this morning, members of the ship's fire fighting team was summoned via the ship's public address system to report to a forward, crew area on Deck 0 where smoke was accumulating. As a precaution, fire doors were closed in that portion of the ship.

Following the initial fire team alert, the ship's captain, Vincenzo Alcaras addressed passengers via the public address system. The captain said that a sensor had triggered an alarm indicating that there might be a fire in the forward crew area. When the fire team arrived, they found a smoking belt within an air conditioning unit and "extinguished it immediately".

A short time later, Carnival spokesperson Joyce Oliva sent a statement that "a fan belt inside an air conditioning unit in a crew area overheated and started generating smoke. There was not an actual fire and no smoke entered guest areas. The ship's crew responded immediately and all is well."