Fire breaks out in cruise ship’s engine room

The Grand Princess, a 2,592-passenger cruise ship with a crew of more than 1,000, experienced a fire in its engine room and lost power about 20 miles from Hilo on Monday morning.

The cruise ship, headed to Hawaii from San Francisco, will skip its Hilo port call and instead is expected to arrive in Honolulu this morning.

Passenger Jo Arnow said via a text message to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the vessel’s captain told passengers that there were more resources in Honolulu to fix the engine.

The Grand Princess is a Princess Cruises vessel, and spokeswoman Karen Candy said that at 5:30 a.m. Monday, when the vessel was on the fifth day of its voyage and 20 miles from Hilo, a propulsion circuit breaker in the aft electrical switchboard failed, resulting in a small fire and smoke.

None of the crew or passengers was reported injured.

The incident caused a power failure, resulting in the use of emergency lighting and limited air conditioning for a short time, Candy said.