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Human error led to fire that disabled Le Boréal in the Falklands

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France's Marine Casualties Investigation Office released its report on the cause of Le Boréal's engine-room fire (Photo: Philip Pilsson)
Human error in replacing a clogged fuel filter caused the engine room fire on Le Boréal which left the Ponant ship dead in the water off the Falkland Islands last November, French investigators have determined.

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 18, a fire broke out in the ship's diesel generator compartment and quickly spread to the engine room's upper decks. The water-mist extinguishing system was automatically triggered but failed to prevent the blaze from spreading along bunched cables. Le Boréal lost propulsion power. The ship's emergency generator kicked in.

Firefighting teams managed to bring the fire under control at 4:30 a.m. but the engines couldn't be restarted. As the vessel was drifting toward Cape Dolphin, East Falkland, and in danger of grounding, the captain made the decision to drop anchor and evacuate the passengers and nearly all the crew members, with the help of rescue teams from the British Royal Navy.

Those on board were transferred to Le Boréal's sister ship, L'Austral, which was nearby, and repatriated from Port Stanley.

There were no injuries to passengers or crew.

In its newly released accident report, the Marine Casualties Investigation Office of the French Ministry of Transport cited human error as a causal factor. Around 8 p.m. on Nov. 17, Le Boréal's second engineer decided to feed a diesel generator from a tank that had not been used since Sept. 25. At the end of the watch, when it was observed that the DG4 clogging indicator was red, an officer suspected the cause was the quality of HFO in the tank and decided to replace the fuel filter.

Around 12:10 a.m., the officer accidentally unscrewed the filter cover for DG3, which was in use, therefore, under pressure. This caused fuel to splatter and a fire broke out immediately at the DG3 turboblower and rapidly spread, via the bunched cables, to the upper decks of the engine compartment.

The officer did not have a mechanic's rating. After the fire, Ponant issued a technical memorandum forbidding night work by individuals on sensitive areas such as the fuel lines, and the investigatory report recommended that Ponant require its night watch officers to have a mechanic's rating.

Le Boréal was carrying 347 people, including 194 passengers, on an 11-day Antarctica cruise. The disabled vessel was assisted alongside to Port Stanley by two Dutch tugs and eventually towed to Punta Arenas, Chile. There it was loaded aboard a heavy lift vessel in January and transported to Europe for repairs in Genoa.