Cargo Fires

[VH-ELP]

Just interested to know what people's thoughts are re: Cargo fires and subsequent actions after landing.

Is it preferable to evacuate immediately, wait for stairs etc to be made available (assuming this is done quickly), ask for fire services to visually verify the status of the fire, the list goes on.

The assumptions are that:

a) the compartment in class C i.e. sealed
b) the cargo fire protection has been activated in-flight
c) the cargo fire warning system is a smoke detector type and therefore there is no method to verify the fire is extinguished without opening the compartment and venting the smoke.

I am just interested to hear your varying philosophies and/or company policies concerning the decision to evacuate.

Thanks in advance.

[None]

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=59122&highlight=In+flight+Fires

[VH-ELP]

Thanks for the link, very interesting stuff. Unfortunately no reference to after landing actions/ evacuation though.

Look forward to more thoughts.

Cheers

[None]

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=81808&highlight=Evacuate

[conch]

I know a case which happened a few years ago in a company where the cargo fire warning came on during cruise, the fire extinguisher was triggered and the warning did not disappear. The crew continued to their destination because it was the closest airport anyway. A full evacuation was done and after the cargo door was opened...big surprise...false warning!
When you are not able to determine if the fire is out it sometimes seems to mee you can do whatever you want do you will have to talk to your chiefpilot afterwards anyway..... Especially in the mentioned case above where the airplane was a turboprop. No slides are installed and people have to jump out and can get hurt. Using the stairs could be a good choice but in case the fire is still on the crew would be blamed in the incident report to have acted in a reckless way. So for safety reason it is always reasonable to perform a full evacuation procedure.

[None]

"When you are not able to determine if the fire is out it sometimes seems to mee you can do whatever you want do you will have to talk to your chiefpilot afterwards anyway"

For the operation I am with, after any incident, or after any declaration of an emergency, we must speak with our Chief Pilot. If he is not available, we have a pilot Duty Officer who we must contact.

The idea is to have the "team" decide if it's prudent to continue with the flying for that day (also avoids blind-siding the C.P. the next day). This might prevent flying while distracted...and it is said one might not realize that you might think back about what happened while working the next leg. It also might (just maybe) appease the government agency should they later look into why you flew more that day.

[conch]

I totally agree with you, None. That is the way it should be! In the company I mentioned above the captain was blamed afterwards for having harmed the company on purpose! There are always different ways of looking at it, at least for some people. But this is another story....