Faulty Boats, Alarms Found in Fatal Ship Blaze

A cruise ship that burned in the North Sea last year, killing 159 people, had rotten lifeboats and missing or insufficient fire alarms, it was reported Wednesday.

A panel appointed by the governments of Norway, Sweden and Denmark found that the U.S. Coast Guard and Miami-based SeaEscape cruise line failed to detect the defects before the Scandinavian Star was transferred to a Danish company, the Miami Herald said.

The panel’s investigative report is “the best evidence to date that international standards offer no guarantee--or even a good bet--that passenger vessels are safe,” said James Kolstad, chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Police blame an arsonist for the fire, which occurred in April, 1990, a week after Miami-based SeaEscape said it sold the ship to VR DaNo Lines of Denmark. But SeaEscape, which carries more than 700,000 passengers a year on its Florida ships, still held title and had received only a down payment.

In January, 1990, the Coast Guard at Port Everglades inspected the Star, a 465-foot ship registered in the Bahamas. The Coast Guard, which makes quarterly inspections of all cruise vessels stopping at U.S. ports, certified the ship as safe, the newspaper said.

The Herald obtained portions of the 1,000-page report by the investigative panel.

The report said that only about a third of the ship’s fire alarms were loud enough to awaken passengers. More than half of the dead, 99 victims, were found in their cabins.

Three alarm horns in the ship’s safety plan were missing, it said.

Investigators also said they found crucial lifeboats in poor condition, with rotten wood and corroded metal parts that had been painted over.

SeaEscape President Douglas MacGarvey said his company “did everything correctly. We can’t explain some of these deficiencies. To the best of our knowledge, we delivered the vessel in proper working order.”