The Maritime Blog and the Professional Mariner are pointing to two Marine Safety Alerts issued by the Coast Guard today which may suggest that the fixed CO2 system on the Carnival Splendor failed.

The Safety Alerts do not identify the ship by name but note:

A machinery space fire onboard a relatively new vessel was effectively responded to and extinguished by the vessel’s quick response team firefighters using portable extinguishing equipment.  However, before it was declared completely extinguished and approximately five hours after the fire started, the master of the vessel made the decision to release CO2 from the vessel’s fixed firefighting system. It failed to operate as designed. Subsequently, crew members were unable to activate it manually and CO2 was never directed into the machinery space.

The two Safety Alerts are titled, “WRONG DIRECTIONS: A RECIPE FOR FAILURE” which describes plans and manuals that did not reflect the arrangements of firefighting equipment as installed on the ship and “SIMPLE FAILURES RENDER CO2 SYSTEM INOPERATIVE” which describes multiple small problems with the CO2 system which prevented it from functioning in the emergency.