Apparently there has been a rash of fires on board NCL's Norwegian Epic as she nears completion at the shipyard in France. There was one on May 4 that I wrote about and shortly after another was reported on the higher decks near the waterslide. Now, just this weekend on June 6th, a third fire was reported as the shipyard workers and their families were taking a tour of the almost finished ship.
Apparently the fire started on deck 8 in an air conditioning room and it forced the evacuation of hundreds of people. Luckily there were no injuries and the damage was minimal but that isn't where this story ends. French officials are treating the fire as suspicious and there have been statements to the effect that it appears to have been deliberately set. The investigation is ongoing.
NCL has announced that the ships delivery and inaugural events will proceed as scheduled. So far this ship is off to an interesting start with this string of bad luck. Let's hope it ends here.
2 comments:
I am due to go on Epic for 2 nights on 22nd Junefor 2 nights and I was really really looking forward to it. However, with this recent news, I am seriously questioning whether it is actually safe. With 3 fires in such a short space of time, it can't just be an accident and coincidence. Somebody has seriously got it in for this ship. I just wonder why...
I think it's been bad luck more than anything even if this last one does turn out to be intentional. There were lots of visitors on board and what they initially see as intentional could just be someone being careless with a cigarette or something.
The first two fires appear to be just accidents. Fires start all the time on ships under construction mostly due to all the welding taking place. I wouldn't really worry about it much once the ship is completed.
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