...what happened to cause the fire...disney will never tell, i'm sure of that. but later in the morning after the fire, we heard from our neighboring cruisers that their neighboring cruiser was the head of wdw risk management who told them the fire started in the incinerator. however, from the pictures we took, we've had two different engineers in two different states say they believe is was a diesel fuel fire...that flames don't shoot up a stack like that from an incinerator fire. one of these two engineers has been in the cruise industry for a number of years....he believes that it was likely a faulty valve on one of the engines that blew and caused the fuel to ignite. this is simply conjecture, remember, but it's probably as close as we'll get to the truth
as for what we experienced...we were in the walt suite (8030) which is just slightly forward of the midships elevators. i was awakened (dh slept on...how, i'll never know!) at 4:26 a.m. to the sound of running feet on deck nine directly above us. not more than 5 minutes later, the captain announced "red team aft funnel." okay...red...hmmm....FIRE! so, i wake dh and we go out on our veranda and see heavy smoke (remember this is 4:30 A.M.!) pouring off the deck above us. dh begins filming the smoke, hunks of burning embers and the water now pouring off the side of the ship from where the firefighters were trying to put out the fire. not too long after that, the captain comes on the loudspeakers again, announces that there is a fire in the aft stacks, but that the crew was working on it and there was nothing more the guests needed to do. not more than 5-10 minutes after that, the captain again came on the loud speakers and said that as a precaution, since the sensors were going off on all decks, they were evacuating cabins around the aft stacks (the stacks run from the engine room at the bottom of the ship to the top of the ship).
around 5 a.m., jackie (our cruise director) came on the loudspeakers and announced that as a precaution, the captain had ordered a general evacuation...that we were to don our life jackets and proceed to our stations (ours was station D, port-side, 4th deck). so, off we went...and stood and stood and stood, while around us people were either getting sick, passing out or generally complaining. the crew was having a time of it trying to keep people in line so that the firefighting crew could get their supplies (which must have been stored up in the bow area on deck 4...if you've ever done the walk on 4, you'll know to what i'm referring) and run them to the fire. we did see them prepping the life boats, checking the cranes, etc. there were at least three other cruise ships in the area to pick us up if we did have to go that route. we were told that we had been within 10 minutes of manning the lifeboats, but i don't know how reliable that was.
all told, we were on deck for just over an hour. some guests, who were closer to the stacks, were probably out of their cabins longer. but by 6:15, i was rolling our kids back into bed. dh went to the internet cafe to email our mothers (in case they heard about it on the morning news, but of course they didn't), but by the time he got there, disney had already shut off the phones and the internet. nothing like controlling the information flow. even today, i am amazed that disney was able to contain what happened. it was not, as the press report would imply, a minor fire. crews on the other ships in the area reported flames shooting 60 ft in the air. if it were a minor fire, they would not have flown lloyds of london (who is the recognized leader for ship safety in the industry, apparently) and dave ouimet (president of
dcl) in to look at the damage. but by 11:00 a.m., the crews were already repainting, covering up the scorch marks.
and for our trouble, dcl gave every cabin (NOT person, which i think would have been much more acceptable to everyone on board) a $100 credit....which most people spent in the store the last night of the cruise, judging by the crowd in there!
of course, we also survived the september 2000 wonder cruise where the diesel exhaust backed up into the ventilation system...even the concierge on the magic suggested that the problem was us. so, fair warning...we have already rebooked for may 24, 2003 on the magic.
