Volume 46, Number 1, Spring/Summer 1998

Fire On Ice

By Jane Ellen Stevens

Note: Jane Stevens, on assignment for Discovery Channel Online, was aboard the Aurora Australis, an Australian research ice-breaker, in the Antarctic winter sea ice ecosystem when a fire broke out in the engine room in the early hours of July 22. This is her account of that experience. The researchers were on a seven-week expedition to explore, for the first time ever, the Mertz Glacier Polynya. The polynya (poh-LYNN-ya-a Russian word for "lake in the ice")-lies deep within the ice and is about the size of the state of Maryland. It plays a relatively large part in controlling the Earth's climate. It's one of the engines that drives the world's ocean circulation, and it helps keep the Earth cool. It may also be a winter oasis for Antarctica's wildlife. No one knows.

An online report from the Australian research vessel Aurora Australis.

Adrift in the Antarctic ice, July 24, 1998-The worst thing that can happen to a ship at sea is fire in the engine room.

At 2:30 a.m., one long, ear-thrumming alarm bell--a signal that means "fire"--jerked me from the edge of sleep. "A fire drill?" I questioned. "At this hour?"

Several of the researchers had just inaugurated this 24-hour-a-day expedition into the Antarctic winter sea ice ecosystem--an area that grows to be twice the size of the United States every austral winter--by planting a giant weather buoy into an ice floe at midnight. They had collected snow samples and an ice core. The process had taken a couple of hours, and I'd just crawled into my bunk and turned off the light when the alarm sounded.

I opened my cabin door to peer into the hall. Nathan Bindoff, an Australian oceanographer who has one of the three best laughs on the ship, a sort of impishly evil heh-heh-heh, stumbled down the hall in his work clothes. "Is this a drill?" I asked. He uttered no sound, but sleepily shook his head and shrugged: Don't know.

The alarm abruptly stopped. I stood for a few moments, hoping the alarm was false and waiting for the silence to settle in for the night. The alarm erupted again. "Attention." The Australian-accented tenor of Tony Hansen, captain of the Aurora Australis, echoed through the loudspeakers on the ship. "Attention, please. There's a small fire in the engine room. Please muster to the heli-deck."

It wasn't a drill. But it was a small fire, so maybe it wasn't serious, I reasoned. Something like this had happened on a previous trip I'd made into the winter sea ice aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a U.S. research icebreaker, and we were back in our bunks within a couple of hours.

My roommate, penguin researcher Barbara Wienecke, awakening from a deep sleep, rolled out of her bunk. She's one of the three best laughers on this expedition, but no one would hear her hearty ha-ha-ha or hee-hee-hee for the remainder of this day. I donned a turtleneck sweater, sturdy pullover, jacket, as well as long underwear, heavy sweatpants, heavy socks, and wool-lined boots. The temperature was 33 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) when we had crossed into the sea ice ecosystem at 10 a.m. that morning, but had dropped to 17 degrees F (minus 8 degrees C) before the researchers deployed the buoy. The clothes would be enough, I assumed. Assumptions live to bite back.

I glanced at Barbara, who was donning her "freezer" suit--fully lined, heavy long-sleeved overalls designed to withstand minus 4 degrees F (minus 20 degrees C). "Why are you putting that on?" She shrugged. "It was already out." She'd been wearing it to watch the buoy deployment, and hadn't put it away.

We grabbed hats, gloves and lifejacket. I began to walk into the companionway and stopped to reach for a small flashlight tucked on the bookshelf. It was probably overkill, I mused, but you never know.

We scampered toward the stern and up one flight. Emerging from the door to the helicopter deck, I noticed that the lifeboats had been lowered. The night was moonless. A thick layer of clouds blocked even the tiny comfort of light from distant stars. The ship sat, dead in its track through the sea ice. I was stunned to see two of the ship's crew dressed in full fire-fighting gear--heavy black coats and pants, black boots and yellow helmets. Breathing masks and oxygen bottles lay at their feet. They stood silently, grimly. I smelled smoke.

Floodlights spotlighted the deck. I hurried toward the muster station on the port side. Kieran Jacka, a research meteorologist, bent over a roster and nervously called out names. The air temperature had dropped noticeably, to 5 degrees F (-15 C) and I knew I'd get cold if we were out for long. I began to feel the first pangs of uncertainty.

Meanwhile, in the bowels of the ship, the small fire in the engine room was growing fiercely and quickly out of control. The engine room occupies the two lowest decks on the Aurora. A center stairwell connects the two decks. The engineers had found a small fire near the port engine, located on the bottom deck, and put it out. But it was not the main source of the fire. When the fire flared again in another spot, third engineer Rob Cave, first officer Peter Dunbar, and second officer Scott Laughlin fought the blaze, which seemed still manageable at this point. They ran out of the engine room to retrieve more extinguishers. Just as they popped through the exit doors, an explosion ripped through the port engine. A massive fireball swept through the bottom deck, up the stairwell and nipped at the heels of two other engineers on the deck above who streaked through separate watertight doors and slammed them into a locked position.

Seven decks up on the bridge, Hansen felt and heard the sickening thump of the explosion. He knew that the situation had turned critical. At the same moment, just seven minutes after the alarm sounded, all power went out and the whole ship went black.

Outside in the bitter cold, two decks down from the bridge, a soft murmur went through the expeditioners and crew assembling on the thin layer of snow on the heli-deck. The sudden darkness was absolute. The silence, stunning. On a ship, we live with constant background noise-the continual exhale of air from the vents, water pulsing through pipes, and below all that, the comforting heartbeat of the engines. Now the ship was dead, and we heard only the silence of the Antarctic sea ice, silence unbroken for thousands of square miles around us. The 308-foot Aurora, once vibrant and huge, shrank to insignificance as acrid smoke billowed from her funnels.

"Don't panic," said Les Morrow, the third officer, in a formal British accent. "Ladies and gentlemen, please stay together and I'm sure we'll be just fine." Morrow, a veteran captain on cruise ships who took an officer's position because he wanted Antarctic experience, was born to handle life-threatening emergencies. His delivered clipped words in an understated manner, and remained, on the exterior, completely at ease.

Jacka stammered: "I can't see." I remembered the flashlight in my pocket, took it out and flicked it on. He began calling out names again. Tony Worby, deputy voyage leader and sea ice scientist, appeared and finished calling the roster. Three people were still unaccounted for. Voyage leader Ian Allison brought his group over from the starboard muster station, stuck his roster under the flashlight and began calling out names.

"Karen Evans."

"Here."

"Deb Thiele."

"Here."

"Emer Rogan."

"Here."

Allison is a sturdy, barrel-chested glaciologist who stopped counting the number of times he's been on Antarctic expeditions at No. 20, and that was several years ago. His voice boomed loud, but the night seemed to swallow it. The expeditioners' responses were strong, but wavering with fear. Worby called out the remaining names on his list. All of us, some more prepared than others for the cold, were together and safe. I switched off the flashlight. I sensed Ian looking at me. "Better to save the batteries," I said.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Morrow's clear voice floated over us. "Please move to the back of the stern. It's a little less windy back here. Those who have fewer clothes move to the center."

We shuffled to the back of the heli-deck. It was difficult to put names to the shapes in the black night. Helen Douglass, the ship's doctor, stood next to me. "How are you?" she asked. "Fine. Cold." I began shivering, and scooted close to the back of another body for warmth.

Morrow's radio crackled, the only sound in the night. From snippets of transmissions between the captain on the bridge and the crew, the drama continued to unfold in the engine room. The two engineers who had fled through different doors were accounted for. The BA (breathing apparatus) team and the officers closed all watertight doors leading from the engine room. It was clear that the fire was raging out of control, and threatening to set off liquified natural gas tanks as well as the tanks filled with hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel. The captain ordered preparation for dropping the halon, a halogenated fluorocarbon that chemically locks up all oxygen and deprives fire of its vital fuel.

But after Morrow called out his roster, three crew members were still missing. The captain could not drop the halon until every person was found. After a few moments, Dunbar radioed: "Mark the cook's with me." While the other two crew members were located, Worby took the opportunity to grab two coats, and gave them to people who were wearing only light jackets.

"All crew members are accounted for, captain," radioed Morrow. "All expeditioners are accounted for," followed Allison.

Hansen's voice sounded small through the radio as he went through the countdown to drop the inert gas. Morrow interpreted. His voice rang out clear and strong, above our fears. "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain is initiating a procedure to put out the fire in the engine room...Ladies and gentlemen, as you can hear from the radio report, the captain has now dropped the halon in the engine room."

It was at that moment, just 22 minutes after the alarm went off, in the dark with the officers and crew of the Aurora Australis battling for the life of the ship and all of our futures, that I realized the seriousness of the situation. The black night seemed to close in on us, trap us in a nightmare that wasn't a dream. But the mind does funny things at times like these. I tucked my face into the top of my life vest to keep my nose warm, and dropped into a love-hate relationship with the bright orange lifeboat. I dreaded the thought of getting into the windowless, claustrophobia-inducing craft that looks like an overgrown rolly-polly bug. That would certainly mean that some of us, perhaps all of us, would die, because the ship would be aflame and perhaps sink. On the other hand, some of us might survive this ordeal in it. I was scared, as I've never been scared before. We were all scared, from the captain on down.

Antarctica doesn't offer many avenues of escape, especially where we were, 1500 miles from the closest port and deep into the winter sea ice that only a handful of ships in the Southern Hemisphere can penetrate.

We were quiet, each of us occupied with our own thoughts, on edge waiting for the next development, and mentally preparing for the worst. I thought about my husband, Rob, and calculated that we'd been married just two weeks and three days. I had to see him again. I wondered if he could sense, 10,000 miles away, what was happening to me, and I talked to him to tell him that I was fine. So far.

The sticky sweet odor of halon drifted from the funnels over us. "Ladies and gentlemen, please move to the starboard side near the helidoors," said Morrow. "It's getting a tad whiffy over here."

We shuffled together, like so many emperor penguins, the colder of us scooting to the center. My legs were so frigid that it didn't seem to matter that I was wearing enough clothing above my waist. I shivered uncontrollably. I vowed that, given another chance, I'd over-prepare, overdress, and assume the worst. Sea ice researcher Petra Heil seemed to be the only fully prepared expeditioner. Not only was she wearing a freezer suit, heavy hat, gloves, and boots, but she was carrying a bag of warm clothes.

Again, my mind gave me a diversion: I'd never secured my lifejacket and in the dark, couldn't find the fasteners. Sarah Howe, a graduate student in oceanography, sensed me struggling, took off her glove and helped me buckle up.

Meanwhile, on the bridge, as radio officer Ian Moodie sent "Mayday" signals, the captain received continual reports from the officers and crew who stood outside the engine room. About 20 minutes after the halon was released, the first BA team--wearing oxygen tanks, masks, head-mounted flashlights, and carrying extinguishers like machine guns--carefully opened one of the watertight doors. They walked into a smoke-filled disaster. The fire had charred or blackened the entire engine room. As they made their way along the catwalks, they ducked under live electrical wires that snapped and flicked menacingly. Their flashlights barely penetrated the smoky gloom. Wires on control panels on the upper deck and 40 feet away from the source of the fire had melted. All light fixtures were shattered or melted. Strands of cabling hung down like giant alien spider webs. Both fuel pumps were damaged. The turbo-charged port engine on which the ship relied for breaking ice, was ruined. But the fire seemed as if it was out, and, the second, smaller engine looked as if it hadn't been hurt.

The captain instituted a procedure to send in a BA team every half-hour to monitor the cooling down of the engine room, so that he could make plans to vent the halon. He wanted the engineers to assess the damage and determine if the ship could move. He and his officers began making contingency plans to abandon ship if the fire flared again, and figured out a way to fly us on the ship's two helicopters to a French research station 110 miles away on the Antarctic continent. The station had enough fuel to re-supply the helicopters. But, with a blizzard on the way, and both helicopters only able to fly five people at a time, it was a certainty that, if we had to abandon ship, not all 79 souls aboard the Aurora would survive.

At least our fate would not go unnoticed. One ship and the marine radio station in Sydney responded to the ship's Mayday, and passed the word to P&O Polar Australia Pty. Ltd., the ship's owner, and the Australian Antarctic Division, which chartered the Aurora for the multi-million dollar expedition.

While the captain and the officers wrestled with the next stage of the crisis, the engineers were able to restore emergency power. It was one hour after the alarm went off, and I was so cold that my thinking was sluggish-not a good development in an emergency. Realizing that many people were in the same predicament, the captain said that we could move into the dimly lit helicopter hanger. It wasn't warm, but it was manageable. About half the expeditioners gathered in small groups and talked quietly. The other half slumped against the steel walls, sat on their lifejackets and dropped their heads on their knees. Allison moved casually from group to group, and talked to every person, to make sure that everyone was all right.

Another hour went by. Wienecke, to my astonishment, fell asleep. The second BA team, walking through the smoky, halon-filled engine room, reported no fire. Hansen said we could move to the relative comfort of the video room, which opens onto the heli-deck. The cold had begun to seep into the crippled ship, and all of us kept our heavy clothes on. A little after 5 a.m., he walked in the room to give us an update.

At first glance, Hansen, a trim man with straight blond hair, doesn't fit the old image of a ship's captain. He's about 5-6", has a quick smile, and his blue eyes twinkle impishly. But talk with him for 30 seconds, and his command appears instantly, and you notice his broad shoulders, confidant bearing and intelligence. His courtesy, ability to lead, and willingness to communicate inspires complete loyalty from his hard-working crew. He hopped up on a cabinet by the door. His face reflected the relief of a man who'd escaped great catastrophe, but who was still dealing with a critical situation. We knew that it wasn't over.

"We have to wait to check and make sure the fire's out," he said softly, and explained the procedure that would lead to venting the engine room. It was at that time that we'd face the risk of a fire flaring again. He asked us to stay together in the room until then. "I want to thank you for your patience." We blinked in surprised. He was thanking us? We applauded, and he smiled and left.

At 6:30 a.m., Hansen and Dunbar walked in with several bottles of juice and milk scavenged from the galley. Most people had drifted off to sleep in the chairs or on the floor. Hansen chuckled. It was enough to startle everyone awake. He explained that he was now in radio contact with P&O in Hobart, where engineers and local firefighters had gathered to offer advice on how to vent the engine room so that the fire wouldn't start again. They had advised waiting for several hours to vent the engine room of the deadly halon gas. We were free to return to our cabins, but we'd be called back in at that time, in case the fire re-ignited and we needed to abandon ship. The good news was that the second engine appeared to be unharmed. "When we get it going, we will head back north."

He asked if we had any questions. We were silent. Then someone piped up from a corner of the room: "That was a good fire drill."

Dunbar's rough, blackened face cracked into a smile. "Was it real enough for you?" And he laughed. He's the third of the three best laughers on the ship-a nasal staccato braying. And we all laughed.

I went back to my room. It was colder than the video room, so I changed into my freezer suit and headed back. In the companionway, I ran into Allison. "Have you seen the aurora?" he asked. I rushed on deck. The skies had cleared. In the moonless night, the lime green curtains of the aurora hung on the stars and undulated slowly on solar winds. "Maybe its an omen," said Allison. A good one, I hoped.

All of the ship's systems were down. Except for a few large containers of distilled water from one of the laboratories, we had no water. The sewage system wasn't working, and we had no heat or electricity, except emergency lighting. There was no way to heat water or cook food. But we were alive.

At 2 p.m., all of us gathered one more time in the dimly lit recreation room. Outside, storm clouds gathered and the day disappeared into the gloom of the early sunset at this far latitude. Everyone was wearing freezer suits. We were tense, and all we could do was wait for two hours while the crew vented the engine room. A few people suggested we tell jokes to pass the time. Finally, helicopter pilot Simon Eder broke the ice. For the next two hours, we told jokes. I wrote them down so I wouldn't forget them.

At 4 p.m. the captain came to tell us that the venting was finished and all fires were out. Our relief played out in a variety of ways. Chief biologist Graham Hosie made a beeline for his bagpipes and played a soulful thanks. Some gathered in our small cabins to begin the process of sorting out the day, others took naps, others began to ask: "What's next?"

We had the worst thing happen to us, but under the best of circumstances. If the fire had occurred two days earlier while we were rolling through 15-foot seas, Hansen explained later, fuel would have sloshed back and forth, spreading the fire to other parts of the engine room and likely damaging or destroying the second engine. Crew members would have been injured. The lifeboat would have repeatedly slammed into the ship as it was being lowered, injuring those inside. If it had happened one day later, we would have had to stand outside in a blizzard with 40 to 60 knot winds, and a wind chill of up to -58 F (-50 C). If we were in thick sea ice, instead of fairly loose pack, the ship would have risked becoming beset or even crushed. If we were in looser pancake ice, we might have been pushed by wind and current into one of the icebergs that dotted the icescape.

It could have been much worse, he said. If the officers and engineer hadn't left to retrieve more fire extinguishers, they would have been killed in the explosion. Because we mustered so quickly, he was able to set off the halon gas before the fire destroyed the ship. And it was within moments of doing so-the plastic tops of cylinders containing liquified natural gas had just melted off when the halon snuffed the fire.

But we're not out of hot water yet, so to speak. In fact, 60 hours after the first alarm sounded, we're still dead in the sea ice. We're drifting northwest at about half a knot, and sitting quietly in the midst of large floes of ice, which occasionally break apart and push together as a swell rolls underneath. An iceberg six miles away is now two miles away.

The engineers have turned on the second engine and know that it works, but are trying to figure out how to repair the fuel, oil and sea-water cooling pumps to actually get the ship moving. Three of the expeditioners who are engineers or experts in construction are helping secure live wires, set up lights so that the ship's engineers can see, and restore some necessary cabling. We have no more halon, so the crew has put more fire hoses and extinguishers in the engine room, and set up a 24-hour watch. We have enough food for months, but enough water for only seven days, because the system that converts seawater to fresh was knocked out. But we can be stretch the water supply to weeks, if we go on emergency rations. When the engineers get the second engine going, we'll be limping slowly back to Hobart, because so many systems were damaged. Depending on how rough the seas are, it could be difficult, especially since the stabilizer and propeller governor are out.

Our spirits are fine, although we are all keenly disappointed that the expedition ended before it hardly began, especially Allison, who began planning for this voyage in 1995. We're frustrated because P&O is still restricting communications from the ship. We understand that phone traffic needs to be restricted, because the captain and engineers are still conferring with P&O technicians. P&O has allowed us to receive email, but we cannot send email to our families and friends. It makes no sense.

All power to the galley is still out. The cooks are cooking soup on two tiny gas stoves that Wienecke brought for her work. Expeditioners are helping with chopping and cut-ting vegetables, with dishwashing and cleaning. The last two afternoons, during breaks in the blizzard, we've had a snowball fight or two on deck. At night we go to the bar for music, laughter, and a beer or two to celebrate our place in the world.

Postscript: The Aurora was adrift in the sea ice for three days. We had no heat, but miraculously, the engineers restored the sewage system, water and hot water. They worked 24 hours a day to jerry-rig makeshift fuel pumps, oil pumps and monitoring systems around the charred wiring to the second engine. On the way back, the engine stopped twice: once because a frozen pipe burst and sprayed water over an electrical supply box that shorted out, and the second time because the fuel pump stopped working. To keep as steady load as possible on the ship's remaining engine, we steered a weather course back to Hobart and skirted the storms that continually roar around the continent. Ten days after the fire, the Aurora limped into the bay where three tugboats waited. The captain ordered the engine turned off. But the demons that were dancing on the ship refused to let go. The main tug's tow line-so large that I wouldn't be able to wrap my hands around it-snapped in half, twice. The Aurora drifted dangerously close to the rocky cliffs of an island while the captain calmly asked the engineer if he could start the engine just one more time. At 4:30 a.m., on July 31, the crew lowered the gangway onto the dock, and expeditioners ran into the waiting arms of friends and family who had gathered to greet them.

The cause of the fire was a broken fuel line to the larger turbo-charged engine. The engine room, damaged more seriously than thought, will take months to repair. The second and third voyages of the Aurora Australis were canceled, and the fourth is questionable, a situation that has thrown Australia's 1998-1999 Antarctica research season into disarray. Nevertheless, the Australian Antarctic Division has rescheduled the polynya expedition for approximately the same time next year, on the Aurora. All of us who were aboard want to return.