Fire on board of the hydrogen-propelled passenger ship

The boat was performing a drive test when one of the 280 lead gel batteries exploded and took fire.
The local fire brigade was able to extinguish the fire but the above deck section of the boat was extensively damaged.

According to Volger and to Wannemacher, the automatic fire-alarm system of the hydrogen storage and the fuel cells were "brought in a safe state" and did not suffered any damage.

The INITIATING cause, as reported by the local news, was an explosion in one of the batteries, which developed into a general fire.

According to one of the reference (T. Wannemacher), the "cause was a wrong battery installation by an external battery company".

hydrogen passenger inland boat

The boat was built in 2008 and had already successful started service. The fire developed during a drive test, the references do no report the number of people on board at that time.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOAT
A detailed description of the boat design is given by F. Vogler et al. at the ICHS2011 (see reference). The boat had installed an electrical motor of 160 kW, provided by two fuel cell systems, each with a peak power of 48 kW, and a 560 V lead gel battery pack.
The hydrogen storage system consisted of 12 tanks at 350 bar , for a total of 50 kg.

No consequence to people. The over deck part was destroyed. No damage occurred to the on-board hydrogen systems.

Considering the hazards related to the presence of compressed hydrogen on board, the local fire brigade intervened with 50 responders and 2 water throwers.

The boat was the world first boat propelled by hydrogen and fuel cells. Its safety design is described in details by Vogler and by Wannemacher (see references).
According to them, the incident has damaged the public reputation of the fuel cell technologies, but demonstrated the soundness of the safety design:

1) Neither the fuel cell nor the hydrogen were involved in the incident sequence;
2) The preventing and mitigating measures of the hydrogen storage and fuel cells systems worked according to the design;
3) Despite of the massive damages was neither the fuel cell system nor the hydrogen
storage was damaged or endangered;