Toll Rises in North Sea Ferry Fire : Disaster: Up to 147 are reported dead. As workers begin removing bodies, police launch an arson investigation.

Exhausted firefighters Sunday braved intense heat and poisonous smoke from a burning North Sea ferry to begin removing the bodies of up to 147 victims while Norwegian police began the hunt for a suspected arsonist.

The fire aboard the Danish-owned Scandinavian Star ferry was so intense that it melted aluminum on the ship’s bridge, according to rescue workers. By late Sunday night, the blaze was reported extinguished.

Meanwhile, a fire broke out today on a car ferry carrying 297 people from Britain’s west coast to Ireland, killing a crew member and injuring at least nine other people, a Royal Air Force spokesman said.

Authorities in Oslo said the hunt for a suspected arsonist in the fire on the Scandinavian Star is under way.

“We are basing our work on the concrete theory that it was arson,” Oslo’s assistant chief of police, Magnar Aukrust, told a news conference in the Norwegian capital.

Aukrust noted a possible link between the Scandinavian Star disaster and several recent fires on Danish North Sea ferries, at least one of which was blamed on arson. It was not immediately clear if arson was the cause of the today’s fire on the British car ferry.

Officials in Lysekil, where the Scandinavian Star is docked, said 75 passengers were confirmed dead. The search continued for up to 72 missing people believed to still be on board the ship.

The fire began before dawn Saturday while the ship was in the North Sea carrying about 500 tourists and crew members overnight from Norway to Denmark.

Firefighters in masks and breathing equipment fought through one corridor “until their gear started to burn,” said fire official Olle Wennstrom. One firefighter was slightly hurt Sunday.

Early Sunday morning, a few hours after the ship was towed into port, the fire spread from the gutted middle section to the captain’s bridge. The blaze sent plumes of smoke over Lysekil, about 250 miles southwest of Stockholm.

Tugboats doused the ship with water. Holes were blasted into the side of the 10,500-ton vessel to allow water to drain out, for fear that the badly listing ferry would topple onto the concrete dock.

Officials with VR-DANO Line, the company in Copenhagen that owns and operates the Bahamian-flagged ship, said the blaze was caused by an arsonist, citing two fires that broke out at a short interval on different decks.

District Police Chief Roar Onso, revising earlier figures, said 345 people survived the fire, which broke out about midway on the ship’s 10-hour voyage from Oslo to Denmark’s northern port of Frederikshavn. Ferry captain Hugo Larsen told police of 395 passengers and 97 crew members. If his figure is correct, 147 people died, Onso said.

An American survivor said in a telephone interview Sunday that an apparently faulty alarm never sounded until at least 15 minutes after the fire started.

Rick Qualls, of Hot Springs, Ark., said he never saw a fire crew with hoses and that the motor on his lifeboat didn’t work. He also said he had never practiced an emergency drill on the ship.

“The crew did everything they possibly could. The crew saved as many lives as they could,” he said. “They were understaffed. Never once did we see a fire team, people with hoses. . . .

“The alarm didn’t sound until the ship was filled up with smoke and flames. Because of that, the people who were sleeping are the ones who perished,” he said.

Qualls was part of a seven-member song-and-dance troupe from New York hired to entertain passengers. All but one other member of the troupe, Ruth E. Rome, of East Lansing, Mich., were listed as rescued.

Police Chief Onso said that officials will wait until today to finish conducting a search of the ferry, which was cited for safety and fire violations after a 1988 blaze. A commission of inquiry is to be set up to work parallel to a police inquiry.

Onso confirmed reports that two fires broke out aboard the ferry.

One blaze started in a pile of sheets outside a cabin on the car deck but was smothered by passengers, he said. A second fire started minutes later in a cabin one deck above the car deck, and it was apparently this blaze that turned the ship into a floating deathtrap.