People walking by King's Square in St. George's yesterday morning were greeted with a startling sight: 675 people standing safely at station in the square, complete with brilliant orange life vests. Just in case.

The crew of the cruise ship Norwegian Majesty were performing an exercise they are required to do by law every three months or so - a full-fledged fire and evacuation drill, which they performed in tandem with the Bermuda Fire Service.

"The purpose of the exercise was to test the emergency evacuation plans of the Norwegian Majesty," said Fire Service spokesman Lt. Dana Lovell.

"They get an opportunity to see how effective their plans are and it gives us the opportunity to test our procedures to see how effective ours are as well."

In a real fire situation all 1,751 passengers as well as the 675 crew members would have been evacuated from the ship, he explained. Yesterday, however, passengers watched from portholes or from around the square as the crew reacted to alarms from the ship.

"It's good to see they know what they're doing for this kind of thing," said one passenger.

"The passengers have a drill within five hours of leaving port," explained vice-president of Meyer Shipping Capt. John Moore. The drill is a full passenger muster, he said, with all passengers going to assigned life boat stations and donning life vests.

Each week when a ship arrives in Bermuda the crew also practice fire, abandon ship and man overboard drills, he added, usually putting at least one life boat over. All ships are required by law to perform such drills once a week.

However a massive drill such as this needs only take place every three months, he said. "It's to keep the crew on their toes ... prepare for the real thing, in case it ever happens."

The ship's crew as well as Bermuda's emergency response teams were certainly put to the test. They began with a fire drill, with a supposed fire in the laundry of the ship. Six emergency response units (fire trucks and ambulances) from Hamilton and St. George's arrived on the scene within minutes of the alarm. They quickly set up a forward command post at the entrance to the ship as well as a rear emergency support unit, where incident commander D.O. Melvin Outerbridge co-ordinated the response. At least three crew members were evacuated from the ship to King Edward Memorial Hospital ambulances with mock injuries. One man walked with his arm in a sling, while two others were on stretchers, one with his leg bandaged and the other with an oxygen mask. Finally, the order was given to evacuate the ship entirely.

"It will take about two hours before all the measures are exercised," said Lt. Lovell as he watched the drill. "They have to evacuate, search for the fire, extinguish the fire, then overhaul - that means wetting down the hotspots. It will take a little time with a ship this large." Meanwhile, crew members waited in the square in their life vests, mustering in their assigned stations once more.

Although the ship could be likened to a building by the water, Lt. Lovell said fire crews had to be extremely careful with the amount of water they used to put out a fire in a real situation.

"It is still a ship," he said. "We could actually tip the ship over if we put too much water in."

For that reason, in a real situation water is pumped out of the ship as fast as it is pumped in.

"I think it's going well," said Lt. Lovell. "It's a wonderful chance for the cruise ship companies to see our capabilities."