Riverboat seeks safe harbor

Owners of the historic Delta Queen, the country’s best-known paddle-wheeler, say they may be forced to pull the boat out of regular overnight service on the Mississippi River unless Congress extends its exemption from safety laws.

Opponents say the 1926 steamboat, with a steel hull and wooden superstructure, is a fire hazard.

The waiver exempts the Delta Queen from a federal law that requires fire-retardant materials on vessels carrying 50 or more passengers on overnight trips. The Delta Queen, which typically offers trips of a week or longer on the Mississippi River, is the only vessel affected by the waiver, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Over the last four decades, Congress has regularly extended the waiver, which is due to expire in November 2008. But this year the annual Coast Guard funding bill, as voted out of House and Senate committees, omits the waiver. Neither house has taken final action on the bill.

Joe Ueberroth, president and chief executive of Ambassadors International Inc. in Newport Beach, which operates the Delta Queen under the Majestic America Line, said that to conform to the safety law, “we would basically have to destroy the ship” and spend at least $40 million to rebuild it.

Citing fire risk, the Coast Guard has long argued against the waiver, said spokeswoman Angela Hirsch.

“The issue with the Delta Queen is that it’s made of wood,” Hirsch said. “Wood burns.”

On overnight trips, she said, it would be difficult to quickly evacuate sleeping passengers from cabins.

Ueberroth defended the vessel’s safety. He said its crew was well-trained in fire response and that sprinklers and fire-detection devices were installed throughout the boat.

The Delta Queen’s only recorded fire, Hirsch said, was a minor one in the laundry room in September 2006. The federal law would not bar the Delta Queen from making day trips, she added.

Ueberroth said his company had considered that option, but “it is a different business and one we are very hesitant to enter into.”

Last week Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) sponsored a bill, cosponsored by nearly a dozen colleagues, to extend the safety waiver for the Delta Queen.

The bill faces an uphill battle. It has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which is chaired by Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), who said he opposed the waiver on safety grounds.

“I can’t imagine the number of lives that could be lost if a fire started on the Delta Queen when everyone is asleep,” Oberstar said in an e-mail.

Ueberroth said he believed the waiver was foundering in the Senate because labor opposed it.

The Seafarers International Union represented crews on the Delta Queen under a contract with its former owner, Delta Queen Steamboat Co., Ueberroth said. That ended after Ambassadors International, which is nonunion, bought the vessel last year. As a result, he said, the union was lobbying against the waiver.

Jordan Biscardo, spokesman for the union, based in Camp Springs, Md., declined to comment Monday.

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jane.engle@latimes.com