Industry Takes a Calming Tack After Cruise Ship Fire

As cruise industry officials hurried to assure millions of potential customers that sea travel is safe, federal inspectors began poking through the blackened stern of the luxury liner Ecstasy on Tuesday to check out a theory that a welding torch may have ignited the raging fire that scuttled a Caribbean vacation for more than 2,500 passengers.

Bob Dickinson, president of Carnival Cruise Lines, owners of the 855-foot ocean liner, told a news conference that welders were working near the laundry room when fire alarms sounded minutes after the ship sailed Monday afternoon for a four-day cruise to Mexico.

“Perhaps a spark from the laundry room ignited some lint in the vent tubes, which caused a very high explosive-type fire, which ended up in the mooring deck,” Dickinson said. He said much of the smoke was caused by burning nylon rope.

Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Dickinson’s welding torch theory will be investigated. But asked Tuesday what started the fire, Francis responded: “Not a clue.”

Injuries resulting from the fiery drama, which took place just 1 1/2 miles off Miami Beach, were limited to about 50 members of the 920-person crew who suffered smoke inhalation, according to Carnival officials.

But the public relations effect on the booming cruise industry--growing at a rate of 10% a year--could include renewed concern about safety aboard colossal ocean vessels, which are virtual floating cities. At least 10 fires have broken out aboard cruise ships in the last four years. Six crew members were killed in two of those fires.

Statistically, cruising is one of the safest modes of travel, according to a U.S. Coast Guard report issued two years ago. During the 10-year period examined, “not one passenger death due to a marine incident has been reported on any cruise vessel operating from a U.S. port,” the International Council of Cruise Lines said in a statement.

Yet shipboard fire remains the greatest danger aboard cruise ships, as well as the greatest fear of passengers, crew and industry officials.

“From a safety point of view, fire is what cruise lines worry about the most,” said Andrew Vladimir, a former professor at Florida International University who writes about the travel industry. Cruise line officials well remember the Yarmouth Castle, Vladimir said, which caught fire during a 1965 cruise from Miami to Nassau. Ninety people died.

According to standards adopted last year by the international Safety of Life at Sea--a United Nations maritime treaty by which all major U.S. cruise lines abide--passenger vessels built after 1980 must be equipped with sprinkler systems, emergency lighting along escape routes, fire-retardant construction materials and compartmentalized fire safety zones. Passengers also routinely are briefed at the beginning of each voyage on how to use life jackets and abandon ship if necessary.

Yet American-owned cruise lines, including Carnival, register their vessels in a variety of countries--Liberia, the Bahamas, Panama, for example--chiefly to avoid U.S. jurisdiction and more rigorous safety inspections.

Ships that call in U.S. ports are subject to annual U.S. Coast Guard inspections, and fire safety regulations have been beefed up in recent years. Yet just this year, the NTSB warned that the cruise ship industry is courting disaster if fire safety standards aren’t made even tougher.

Indeed, as Dickinson acknowledged, fires are fairly common aboard ship. “Normally, we are able to quickly suppress them,” he said.

Of the fire that turned the Ecstasy into a smoky inferno, Dickinson said: “It was a very theatrical fire, and you could see it on the evening news, billowing black smoke.

“This was not a severe fire. This was a fire that would have burnt itself out.”

Some passengers who paid up to $4,000 each for what was to be a “Fun Ship” cruise to Key West and Cozumel, Mexico, wondered about that Tuesday. “My wife opened the door and the smoke was so thick she couldn’t even see,” said Edmund Thomas of Buffalo, N.Y., one of several hundred passengers who was put up in a hotel after the Ecstasy was towed into port in the early hours of Tuesday. “She tried to get the life jackets, but she couldn’t. And me and my kids were without life jackets and so that’s what was scary.”

Home video shot by passengers and aired over several Miami television stations Tuesday also showed lots of anxious faces, smoky passageways below decks and some panicky moments.

Francis characterized the fire as severe. “There are certain areas where there is very significant damage of fire to structure,” he said. “There’s a lot of other areas back there where there’s smoke damage. There’s water damage.”

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.