The fire that crippled a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico was caused when fuel from a leaking diesel engine line ignited, the Coast Guard said yesterday.
The oil was in a flexible hose section than stretched from the ship’s “number six” engine to a fuel tank. When it leaked, it touched a hot surface, triggering the engine-room blaze that caused the Carnival Triumph to drift for days, officials said.
Cmdr. Teresa Hatfield, the lead investigator for the Coast Guard, said the crew responded appropriately.
“They did a very good job,” she said.
She said investigators have been with the ship since it arrived Thursday in Mobile, Ala.
Since then, she said, interviews have been conducted with passengers and crew and forensic analysis has been performed on the ship.
Nevertheless, the investigation of the disabled ship will take six months. Hatfield said the investigation will look further at the cause of the fire — and why the ship was disabled so long.
More than 4,200 passengers and crew were stranded before reaching Mobile.
Hatfield said the faulty oil line is one of the parts of the ship that was regularly inspected.
The fire could have turned out much worse, according to Andrew Coggins, a former Navy commander and expert on the cruise industry.
“The problem is the oil’s under pressure,” said Coggins, a professor at Pace University. “What happens in the case of a fuel-oil leak where you have a fire like that is it leaks in such a way that it sprays out in a mist. In the engine room you have many hot surfaces, so once the mist hits a hot surface it will flash into flame.”