Celebrity Cruises’ Captain Kate shares a look at the secret safety test

Celebrity Cruises Captain Kate McCue often shows passengers parts of Celebrity Beyond, the ship she captains, that they have never seen before. In some cases, the “Captain’s Log” behind-the-scenes videos here show places many people didn’t even know existed.

In one of his latest videos, McCue takes his followers through a “block test.” This is an important piece of emergency preparedness that passengers cannot normally see.

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“Just like on land, disruptions can occur on a ship for various reasons. The difference with an outage at home, unless you have an emergency generator on hand, is the amount of redundancies we have to cover key equipment and systems,” she shared.

While cruise ships have redundancies and safety equipment, it is very important that the crew know what to do in the event of catastrophic failure.

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Here’s what happens during an interruption exercise

Cruise lines regularly conduct drills to ensure crew members are prepared for any scenario. A power outage isn’t likely, but if it does happen, McCue’s team will be ready.

“This is something we check with a full-scale intercept drill every six months. During this test, we are not simulating, we are actually shutting down the diesel generators to create an outage, triggering sequences that include turning on the UPS system. , the emergency generator and finally the standby diesel generator with all the auxiliary systems,” she said.

These exercises are not taken lightly.

“After a thorough briefing, Chief Engineer RG lets me initiate the blackout by disconnecting the equipment that powers the entire ship,” she added.

In the video, McCue unplugs a bridge coffee machine.

“Just kidding. The coffee machine is important, but I hope you understand that for safety and security reasons, I won’t say which button exactly initiates an interruption,” she said.

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These are drills for a situation McCue hopes never happens.

“Although power outages happen very rarely, the purpose of the test is to verify the functionality of all related equipment, and it’s a lot of equipment, and to train and share knowledge with our technical teams,” she shared.

Passengers are being informed of the test as it will affect how the ship operates.

“After a briefing, we cause disruption while ensuring the safety and comfort of the guests during the test. All systems related to safe navigation remain on without interruption as they are supported by UPS, emergency generators and finally the main engines” , she added. .

That causes some immediate changes on the ship.

“All elevators automatically go to the boarding deck and the doors will remain open on deck number five,” the captain said.

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Some precautions are taken to ensure that the test does not cause unexpected damage.

“The IT team monitors all IT functions around the ship and as our main theater costs more than the first Royal Caribbean ship ever built, it is important that the CTO and their team ensure that all entertainment systems are switched off before testing. Most power is automatically restored once the ship’s systems are back online, and the entire test takes less than two minutes,” she concluded.

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