Celebrity Cruises' Captain Kate shares look at secret safety test

Celebrity Cruises' Captain Kate McCue often shows passengers parts of Celebrity Beyond, the ship she captains, that they've never seen ahead of. In some cases, here on the back of-the-scenes "Captain's Log" videos exhibit places many folks didn't even know existed.

In a single of her most recent videos, McCue takes her followers through a "blackout test." It will be an awfully important piece of emergency preparedness, that passengers do not in most cases get to peer.

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"A lot like on land, blackouts can happen on a ship for a selection of reasons. The variation with a blackout at home, unless you may need gotten an emergency generator on hand, is the quantity of redundancies that now we have got in place to cover key equipment and systems," she shared.

While cruise ships have redundancies and safety equipment, it is important that the crew knows what to do at some point of the event of catastrophic screw ups.

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Here's what happens at some point of a blackout drill

Cruise lines forever conduct drills to confirm crew members are ready for any scenario. A blackout seriously is never likely, but when it happens, McCue's team is additionally ready.

"It will be something that we refer to a full-scale blackout drill every six months. One day of this test, we're not simulating, we're in actuality shutting down the diesel generators to create a blackout, triggering sequences which encompass starting the ussystem, emergency generator, and eventually the standby diesel generator with all auxiliary systems," she said.

These drills should not taken lightly.

"After an in-depth briefing, Chief Engineer RG lets me initiate the blackout by disconnecting the equipment that powers the total ship," she added.

Within the video, McCue unplugs a bridge coffee machine.

"Just kidding. The coffee machine is important, but I'm hoping you take into accout that for safety and security purposes, I would not be sharing which button exactly initiates a blackout," she said.

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These are drills for a situation McCue hopes won't ever happen.

"While blackouts very rarely happen, the purpose of the test is to verify functionality of all related equipment, and it's a selection of equipment, and to coach and share knowledge among our technical teams" she shared.

Passengers are made aware in regards to the test because it might probably be going to affect how the ship operates.

"After a briefing, we lead to the blackout while making certain guest safety and luxury within the course of the test. All systems related to safe navigation remain on without disruption because they are supported by the UPS, emergency generators, and eventually the foremost engines," she added.

That causes some immediate changes on the ship.

"All elevators automatically go to the embarkation deck, and the doors will stay open on deck number five," the captain said.

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Some steps are taken to confirm the test doesn't do any unexpected damage.

"The IT team monitors all IT functions across the ship, and, since our main theater costs more than Royal Caribbean's first ship ever built, it is important to have the technical director and their team make it conceivable for every person entertainment systems are shut down ahead of the test. Most power is automatically restored once the ship systems are back online, and the overall test takes lower than two minutes," she closed.

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