USCG: Surge protective devices onboard vessels
- Safety Flash
- Published on 25 June 2013
- Generated on 14 September 2025
- IMCA SF 10/13
- 1 minute read
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) published in April this year a Marine Safety Alert on surge protective devices.
Subsequently, an updated and corrected version of this information was made available as Marine Safety Alert 03-13b. The alert covers the risk of fire arising from the misuse of certain voltage surge protective devices used in mains electric circuitry onboard vessels.
A marine casualty investigation of two separate stateroom fires onboard a US flagged container ship revealed that the sources of the fires were attributed to the use of surge protective devices plugged into a lighting circuit.
See the details here.
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