Fire at sea gives navy's new ship its first test

Crew from the Rotoiti come alongside the liferaft and dinghy after the tugboat's crew were rescued. Photo / Supplied

Navy engineer and damage control expert Adam Fraser was fast asleep on one of the Navy's newest ships yesterday when he was shaken awake and told his ship was racing to an emergency every sailor dreads - a fire at sea.

He was ordered to take a boarding party to the burning ship when they reached it nearly 20km east of Mangawhai Heads off the Northland coast.

For the first time in her short life as a commissioned New Zealand warship, HMNZS Rotoiti was gearing up for a full emergency as it responded to a mayday call and raced to the burning tug.

The year-old, 55m inshore patrol vessel was anchored in the Hauraki Gulf about 3.15am yesterday when a watchkeeper heard a mayday call on the VHF channel 16 emergency frequency from the SeaTow ocean-going tug Koraki, moments before the five crew abandoned ship as a fire in the engine room threatened to engulf the vessel.

Within moments the fire was blistering paint on the outside of the funnel.

The crew shut all doors and engine room openings, put out a distress call and took to the inflatable liferaft and a small dinghy.

They activated the liferaft's emergency beacon and waited for rescue.

More than 65km away Rotoiti, commissioned only last year, responded.

Five young officers who were on board for an exercise were dropped at a nearby island to be picked up later and Rotoiti's commanding officer, Lieutenant Andrew Hogg, gave the order to lift anchor and head to the burning ship.

For two hours Rotoiti punched through the swells at 24 knots but by the time it reached the burning tug the fire was largely out and coastguard boats from Whangarei and Kawau Island had rescued the crew as the tug, and the barge it had been towing from Auckland to Whangarei, wallowed in the swell.

Lieutenant Hogg said they were in action quickly.

"We are all seamen at heart and we all live our life out here and know how dangerous these situations are and how much time is of the essence," he said. "We put our foot down. It is as simple as that."

He said the crew might have saved the ship by closing all engine room openings before they abandoned ship, starving the fire of oxygen and putting it out.

The port engine was badly damaged by the fire but within a few hours engineers had restarted the starboard engine and the tug made its way back to Auckland on one engine.

Leading mechanical technician Adam Fraser said the emergency was what damage control in the navy was all about but sailors seldom faced

the real thing.

He said that before they entered the engine room they had to isolate the power.

"You can't just go into a room and splash around water. We didn't know if there was power isolation or not and if you did that you could get electrocuted."

He said the damage control party had full firefighting gear and breathing apparatus as they used a thermal imaging camera to detect hot spots and a multi-gas reader to detect flammable and toxic fumes.

He said there was a good chance the crew had shut down the fire.

"There was equipment in the engine room that could have made that ship an inferno."

- NZPA