Opening Balcony Dividers Yourself

[Turtles06]

Ill be on the Pearl soon and will ask to open the partition to our family next door. We have those enclosed like balconies on Deck 8 so it would be nice to converse without having to yell around the side. Unfortunately our cabins dont adjoin and there are times, like am coffee or nightcaps where we are all out on the balconies

 

And it's been explained on here that this is contrary to policy and dangerous...:rolleyes:

[AmazedByCruising]

And actually, you are completely misunderstanding the Concordia disaster. The reason there was so much confusion and panic, and any loss of life at all, at the later stages of the evacuation is that the muster was not called early enough. And as I've said, every crew member has a duty assigned for an emergency, and none should be taken from those duties to throw things overboard.

 

I'm not trying to say the Concordia disaster would be a nice example of how an emergency should be handled.

a collection of guests filming the disaster. I was surprised at the relaxed behaviour of guests and crew. There's a lot of confusion, but I don't see the panic like I'd imagine on a crashing plane.

 

Let me ask a question. Do the firefighters in your community have the residents re-enter a burning building to throw furnishings out the windows to possibly slow the spread of the fire? I don't think so. In my experience, shore side firefighters will not even work to remove combustibles until the fire is extinguished and they are moving/removing things to look for lingering hot spots.

 

The residents would be safe on the street, making pictures and calling their insurance company. A ship doesn't have a street. I still think asking passengers to throw out curtains, matrasses, flags, luggage would help at least a bit.

[AmazedByCruising]

Post 67.

I'm sorry to say, your statement about paint, is totally wrong.

Most cabins will have layers of paint, upwards of 10,after dry-docking and repainting.

 

I've actually removed thick layers of paint using a machine that applies heat. Possibly the paint used on ships is different, but my experience says that burning paint is an endothermic process.

[ColinIllinois]

........ I still think asking passengers to throw out curtains, matrasses, flags, luggage would help at least a bit.

 

 

This is an absurd and illogical statement. The firefighting team on board the ship must have complete control over what is going in order to contain the fire and ensure the safety of the passengers. The passengers only duty during emergencies is to follow the instructions and muster at life stations if so directed so that they can be accounted for.

 

Common sense.

[chengkp75]

I'm not trying to say the Concordia disaster would be a nice example of how an emergency should be handled.

a collection of guests filming the disaster. I was surprised at the relaxed behaviour of guests and crew. There's a lot of confusion, but I don't see the panic like I'd imagine on a crashing plane.

 

 

 

The residents would be safe on the street, making pictures and calling their insurance company. A ship doesn't have a street. I still think asking passengers to throw out curtains, matrasses, flags, luggage would help at least a bit.

 

Of course there is a difference between a plane and a ship. Even without power, a ship can support itself in the medium it travels in, unlike an airplane. I can't view youtube with our connection, so I can't say when in the timeline these were taken, but I have seen other video in the past, and the reason the passengers and crew seem relaxed is that they have been told from the bridge that "there is nothing to be worried about", and the muster signal has not been given. Schettino caused loss of life for one reason only, he failed to muster the passengers in a timely fashion. All else could have been forgiven if he had just had the intestinal fortitude to do that one act.

 

While you are correct that on shore you can evacuate a building, you can, if needed, evacuate the ship, but we try to do everything in our power to prevent that. I'm no expert in building codes, even in the US, but I do know shipboard construction. Each fire zone boundary is classed as an "A-60" fire boundary, meaning that regardless of how intense a fire is raging on one side of the bulkhead/deck, nothing touching that bulkhead/deck on the other side will get hot enough to ignite for a minimum of 60 minutes. There are additional A-60 bulkheads within the fire zones as well. So, the ship becomes essentially 6-7 buildings in a row, and you can evacuate the one building on fire to the adjacent ones, or ones two buildings away. Each "building" gives you over an hour before you need to think of evacuating the next in line (it takes time for the fire to reach the zone boundary, it takes time to heat up the zone boundary, and it takes an hour to transmit enough heat to jump to the next zone.

 

Where does the crew come from to supervise these passengers who have distributed around the ship to remove furnishings? How do you know how any given passenger will react? Even trained crew, even crew who have had fire training, you never know who will face the beast or who will turn away, until it actually happens. Training gives you "muscle memory" so that hopefully the training kicks in and though kicks out, but in the back of everyone's mind, even with live fire exercises, that there are back-ups to prevent injury, so you relax a little.

 

I'm sorry, but my unshakable viewpoint is that untrained passengers have three duties in an emergency: muster and be counted, shut up, and listen to instructions.

[triptolemus]

I'm sorry, but my unshakable viewpoint is that untrained passengers have three duties in an emergency: muster and be counted, shut up, and listen to instructions.

 

Pick two!

 

Even those with emergency response training in other areas (petrochemical for me), should follow this advice. The dynamics of an emergency aboard a ship are different than those I would have experience with, for example. One thing that does translate is the ability to keep calm, assess and recognize danger, and maintain situational awareness. None of those things mean that because I'm on a ship, I'm qualified to grab a hose line or start throwing stuff overboard.

 

The thought of passengers throwing suitcases overboard to slow the spread of fire is laughably absurd. Too funny...

[chengkp75]

I've actually removed thick layers of paint using a machine that applies heat. Possibly the paint used on ships is different, but my experience says that burning paint is an endothermic process.

 

You're talking about an electric paint stripper. And even then, if you leave it there long enough, it will likely catch the paint on fire. These typically have a temperature of 200-400*F (93-204*C) for consumer strippers, though some commercial strippers will go as high as 1400*F (760*C). Dried paint, whether latex or oil based, has an accepted ignition temperature of around 600-700*C, and the generally accepted temperature of an open flame is 500-600*C. There is no way that paint removal is endothermic (absorbing heat), look at any flammability study of painted surfaces and you will see that they discuss a "heat release rate" from the paint.

[CRAustin]

I used my car key to open[emoji274]

[bbryan5]

When I'm burning my candles I usually bring on board, I leave the dividers closed so a nosey neighbor doesn't report me. Nothing nicer than sitting on the balcony with 2 or 3 scented candles going :)

[NHL Philly Fan]

NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER mess with anything that is part of the ships equipment so to speak.

[Kruizin'Kath]

We always tip our steward when we get on board and ask that the divider be opened. Hasn't failed us yet!

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Again my English is failing :o By "a cruise ship disaster caused by fire" I meant casualties and sinking ships. Not a fire in the engine room that was quickly extinguished causing just minor inconviences. For instance, I knew about Triumph's "poop cruise" that must have been a less than pleasant experience but I wouldn't consider that a disaster.

 

Still, apparently there have been fires where people did die and at least one ship that did sink. I didn't know that.

 

When the crew cannot extinguish the fire immediately, I can see that fire zones are the first line of defense to prevent further trouble, but they could fail as well. For instance, pressing a button to close a door must be hard when you know it would mean certain death for some crew or guests inside that zone, while you'd just enhance the odds for the rest of the ship. I wonder how such situations are described in the procedures, and how you could possibly enforce those procedures.

 

That's not how fire zones work on a modern cruise ship. There are fire doors. Guests can still open the doors and get out from one zone to another to flee the fire, crew can open the doors to enter a zone to fight the fire and help evacuate guests, it's not a button where a captain "sacrifices" a section of the ship and everyone alive in that section, that would be horrible.

[Kamloops50]

Many ships now have sprinklers on the balconies as well. This is a result of the star princess fire in 2003. One person lost his life due to heart attack. The Fire was caused by a cigaret starting A fire on one of the pictures.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Edited August 3, 2016 by Kamloops50

[sunnydaygirl]

I sailed on the Escape Super Bowl 2016. We had adjoining rooms with family. We called down and they sent someone up with the tool. Since I didn't talk to them myself, I doubted they'd come. They most definitely came, after I figured how to do it myself. It's a square opening. You need something wide enough to go at an angle. I figured a butter knife, but my car keys actually worked. It was never shut for the entire 7 days.

[gtaylor]

...

 

Cheng, thank you for all of your knowledgeable comments here and elsewhere.

 

I don't remember which NCL ship we were on, but at the Cruise Critic gathering with the ship's officers we were told.

 

We will do anything possible to make your cruise the best that it can be, but there are two things that we will not / cannot do.

 

Don't ask us to change the age limits on the kid's club programs.

 

Don't ask us to open the dividers between cabin balconies.

 

gary