Fire on cruise ship: Probe committee visits MV Bay One 

The committee formed to investigate the fire incident in the engine room of the cruise ship MV Bay One visited the ship on Saturday.

Earlier on Friday, the Mercantile Marine Office (MMO) under the Department of Shipping made the three-member committee and asked it to submit the inquiry report within the following three days.

The probe body will detect the reason behind the fire, determine the persons responsible for the accident, assess damages, and recommend measures to avoid such accidents in future.

The MMO Chattogram Nautical Surveyor Captain Sheikh Mohammed Jalal Uddin Gazi is the convenor of the committee, while Chattogram Field Unit Coordinator Mohammed Hossain and Ship Surveyor Eng Rafiqul Alam are the members.   

"The ship is now kept at its operating firm Karnaphuli Shipbuilders' yard. We inspected the ship on Saturday morning. We will disclose our findings later," Rafiqul Alam told The Business Standard.

The second engineer of the MV Bay One ship Mohammed Sohel told TBS that they described all the matters to the committee.

"The ship is now 100% okay to sail. We hope we can restart the operation on Saint Martin's route on Thursday," he added.    

The cruise ship that left Patenga for Saint Martin's Island on Thursday night survived the fire incident after two hours of sailing in the Bay of Bengal. Fortunately, it did not see any fatality.

However, the 800 tourists aboard the ship returned to the Patenga coast after 13 hours of a traumatic experience.

They said the negligence of the ship authorities put their lives in danger; it initially tried to hide the information of the fire incident and to continue sailing. Later, in the face of their protest, the ship returned to Patenga.

Former railways minister Mujibul Haque and his family were also cruising by the ship.