South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Is the cruise industry needlessly tempting fate?
When a new cruise ship with 1,373 people aboard nearly wrecked on Norway’s rocky coast last weekend, it demonstrated that the oceans are still the planet’s most treacherous environment and that technology is still not infallible.
It also posed a new and urgent question. What if the ship had been one of the behemoths that regularly sail out of Port Everglades or PortMiami with nearly 9,000 passengers and crew?
Governments from Whitehall to Washington should be asking that question.
The Viking Sky was hugging the coast, never more than a half-hour or so from land, as it sailed into a hurricane-force storm. Perhaps the captain was counting on making it safely to one of several available ports if conditions became too rough.
But technology meant to protect the ship left it crippled. Sensors shut down all four of its engines, leaving it broadside to the wind and 26-foot waves. The ship drifted to within 330 feet of the rocks before the crew managed to drop anchor and avert a major disaster.
Norwegian investigators said sensors detected that the engines weren’t getting enough lubricating oil and shut them down to save them. The rolling and pitching of the ship may have confused the instruments.
The Norwegian Coast Guard evacuated about half the passengers before the engines were restarted. With the storm abating, the ship limped into a safe port. The experience of being winched, one-by-one, from a heaving deck into a hovering helicopter under such fierce conditions is not one that its passengers, many of them elderly, would care to repeat.
The weather was too severe for the helicopters to land on deck, or for the ship’s boats and motor launches to be used.
The Viking Sky, which went into service two years ago, is relatively small. The largest cruise ship afloat, Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas, has 18 decks and is longer than a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It boasts a ten-story water slide, two rockclimbing walls, a carousel, zip lines, a skating rink, an atrium park and 20,000 tropical plants. Three of the company’s sister ships are nearly as large. According to Forbes magazine, the strategy in building such immense vessels is to attract new customers to the cruise industry.
What if such a ship were to be crippled by engine trouble in the path of an Atlantic hurricane or a Pacific cyclone? According to the International Maritime Organization, “rescuing a large number of persons at sea is difficult even under ideal conditions, not to mention the growing industry trend to take large passenger ships into remote areas with scarce shipping traffic and varying weather conditions.”
Loss of power at sea is not rare. In one of the most notorious incidents, Carnival Corporation’s Triumph drifted for five days in the Gulf of Mexico after its engine room caught fire. Its nearly 4,200 passengers faced intolerable conditions, including the lack of working toilets. It became known as the “poop cruise.”
But at least no one died, unlike the partial sinking the year before of the Costa Concordia when its captain sailed too close to the Italian shore and struck rocks. Although it was within hailing distance of land, 32 people died.
After that disaster, and with an eye on the growing size of cruise ships, the International Maritime Organization issued new regulations intended to enhance safety. Under an international treaty prompted by the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, they’re binding on virtually every nation. But they’re open to interpretation and to exception.
The regulations, issued in 2006 and made final in 2010, deal at length with emergency drills, crew training, fire safety, watertight integrity and other matters that, according to the IMO, “place more emphasis on the prevention of a casualty.”
The IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee “agreed that the best way to avoid thousands of persons in survival craft was to ensure that future passenger ships were robustly designed so that, after a casualty, the passengers and crew would normally be able to evacuate to a safe area on board as the ship proceeds back to port under its own power.”
This means the ship should be its own lifeboat. Despite some harrowing hours, the
Viking Sky finally met that test. But it came perilously close to disaster, and 36 people needed hospital care.
The IMO did not propose limits on cruise ship capacity. Congress needs to address that issue.
Our government’s attention to cruise ship safety has focused mainly on crimes against passengers and food-borne diseases. Congress should be asking also whether the IMO’s safety regulations are sufficient and whether the enormity of today’s new ships needlessly tempts fate.
Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O'Hara, Sergio Bustos and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.