Fire detection system on doomed trawler did not work

A fire detection system onboard a fishing trawler that went up in flames and sank last year did not work, an official accident report has found.

"Had it done so the fire would have been detected earlier," investigators have concluded regarding the Suzanne II, lost off the Co Wicklow coast last May.

One of the crew had noticed smoke coming from an engine room vent which quickly got out of control, forcing them to abandon ship in an inflatable life raft.

They were quickly rescued by a passing angling boat which, partly due to the favourable weather conditions, had spotted the plume of smoke and went to investigate.

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All three crew members survived although a report into the incident published by the Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) on Tuesday noted that "had the incident occurred at night or in more adverse weather conditions the outcome may have been very different".

Some time after the fire began a tugboat with firefighting capabilities arrived and attempted to extinguish the blaze but the boat continued to burn and sank after about three hours. The cause of the fire remains undetermined.

Inspected and tested

“Whether the fire detection system did sound but was not heard or whether it failed to alert the crew is unknown,” the report stated.

“Most likely the fire detection system did not sound as it is improbable that it would not have been heard. Not sounding could have been due to a recent defect or a longer standing one.”

It said the detection system was inspected and tested in July, 2018, although it was not known when it was last tested prior to the fire and the vessel’s logbooks were lost in the incident.

Other precautionary equipment also failed to work. The engine room was fitted with an automatic fire extinguishing system that “either failed to activate or more likely activated, but due to the fact the engine room space was not sealed it would have had little effect on a fire of this magnitude”.

A fixed sprinkler system was not utilised due to the speed at which the vessel became engulfed in smoke, it said.