Huck,
It would be interesting to look at the relative manning requirements of the maritime industry.
Let's say a ship was the same length - 225 feet - and carried roughly the same tonnage of cargo. How many crew would be required to be aboard? Would they be required to be trained in onboard firefighting?
Hard to say exactly,but a ship has what's called a safety crew meaning not the minimum crew to navigate the ship from A to B, but to operate it safely and being able to cater for emergencies.
Every sailor needs to pass a certified safety course learning first aid, fire fighting and other safety procedures. On every ship I've been on we had safety drills every Saturday after lunch. Fire drills and life boat drills alternate weeks. Comparing a ship to an airplane is of course not fair, we had all the fi-fi equipment you could wish for. In the engine room and cargo tanks we could inject inert gases, we had huge sea water fire pumps and extinguishers all over the place. I've had three serious on-board fires in my career, all extinguished.
Per