A fire on Grand Princess caused the Princess Cruises' ship to lose power and skip her next call port in Hawaii.
According to the cruise line's PR manager, Karen Candy, at approximately 5:30 a.m. local time yesterday, a propulsion circuit breaker in the ship's aft electrical switchboard suffered a “significant failure, resulting in smoke and a small fire”.
The fire was contained within the switchboard and no crew or passengers were injured.
“The incident was isolated but did cause a power outage resulting in the temporary use of emergency lighting and limited air conditioning for a short time,” Candy said.
Power has since been restored and all hotel and guest services are in operation. Grand Princess was 20 miles off the coast ofHilo at the time of the incident.
“The call to Hilo has been cancelled in order to proceed to Honolulu where shoreside engineers have been deployed to meet the ship for an on-time arrival at 7 a.m. local time on Tuesday, December 1,” Princess Cruises said in a statement.
Any further impact to the itinerary will be determined after the technical officers and engineers complete their assessment.
Grand Princess is carrying 2,592 passengers and 1,095 crew. The ship was on the fifth day of a 15-day Hawaii cruise that departed San Francisco on November 25.