Fixed fire-fighting and detection systems

A ship cannot call the fire brigade. When a fire starts in the engine room, the cargo hold or the galley duct, the systems built into the ship have to find it, hold it inside its space and put it out. Those systems sit unused for years and are expected to work perfectly the one time they are needed. They can also kill: from 1975 to 2000, unintended discharges of carbon dioxide (CO2) fire-extinguishing systems caused 72 deaths and 145 injuries, mainly in the marine industry and mostly during maintenance on or near the system itself. In 2019, a CO2 leak during repair work on a cargo ship in Weihai, China, killed 10 people. Fire safety is also the area port State control inspectors write up most: in 2023, fire safety measures made up about one fifth of all deficiencies recorded by the Tokyo MOU.

This course follows the fixed systems from the rule book to the engine room. It starts with SOLAS chapter II-2 and the Fire Safety Systems (FSS) Code: which spaces need which system, and how much extinguishing medium is enough. It then takes each family of systems in turn: CO2 (the weighing, the blow-through and the 10-yearly cylinder tests under MSC.1/Circ.1318/Rev.1), foam and the annual foam concentrate analysis (including the PFOS ban that took effect on 1 January 2026), water mist, sprinklers and water spray, galley exhaust ducts and deep-fat fryers, fire detection, and the passive protection of fire doors, dampers and fire-rated divisions. The last lesson pulls everything into one maintenance plan, from the weekly lamp test to the ten-yearly hydrostatic test, and shows who does what.

Every rule statement is cited to the instrument and paragraph, so you can check it against your flag’s requirements and your class society’s rules. The manufacturer’s instructions always come first for your particular system.

What you will learn

• Say which fixed fire-extinguishing and detection systems SOLAS II-2 requires in machinery spaces, cargo spaces, accommodation and galleys, and work out the CO2 quantity a space needs.
• Explain how a high-pressure CO2 system works, part by part, and plan its monthly, annual, two-yearly, five-yearly and ten-yearly checks safely.
• Organise foam concentrate sampling and read the analysis report, and know what the PFOS ban means for the foam on board.
• Test sprinklers, water mist and detection systems to the IMO sampling rules, and know when a failure means replacing a whole batch of heads.
• Inspect galley ducts, fryer systems, fire doors and fire dampers the way a port State control officer does.
• Build or audit a SOLAS II-2/14 maintenance plan that shows what the crew does and what needs a trained service technician.