As cruise ships get bigger, evacuation in an emergency becomes tougher
- From: "John Sisker" <jsisker@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 05:21:17 GMT
To Whom It May Concern:
We came across this information in the trades and thought it would be of
interest to this newsgroup as well.
Happy sailing,
John Sisker
SHIP-TO-SHORE CRUISE AGENCY®
(714) 536-3850 or toll free at
(800) 724-6644 & (pagoo ID: 714.536.3850)
http://www.shiptoshorecruise.com
When the new Freedom of the Seas comes in next month, it will make history
as the largest cruise ship, a behemoth built to carry more than 5,000
people.
Boarding passengers will be easy enough. But questions arise about whether
cruise lines can successfully evacuate the Freedom and other ships in
emergencies. Unlike the airline industry, cruise lines don't have to prove
they can get every passenger off ships within a set time. Routine lifeboat
drills are done without passengers because of the risk of injury. "It's just
too dangerous," said Jack Westwood-Booth, head of marine technology at the
International Maritime Organization, which sets safety rules at sea. It's so
dangerous that beginning July, the organization will drop a requirement that
crews board lifeboats during drills because too many seamen have been killed
or injured in accidents. While some lines plan no changes, the new rule
could leave sailors even less prepared in emergencies, such as the 11/2-hour
fire on a Princess Cruises ship last month that killed one passenger and
injured 13. The ship did not have to be evacuated, but passengers said the
thought weighed on their minds "We certainly didn't know what we were
heading into as we were walking out of the cabin in our life vests," said
Dan Deutsch, a Brooklyn product manager for a credit ratings agency. Cruise
lines do simulate emergencies for internal readiness. And shipyards are
starting to use computer generations of emergencies to design ships. But as
ships grow, so does the potential for catastrophe, critics say. "You're
talking about a whole city full of people on a ship," said James Hall,
former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Drills vs.
reality Cruise lines aren't alone in pushing the envelope on size. Later
this year, an airliner that can carry 850 passengers is expected to start
service. Since 1965, the Federal Aviation Administration has required plane
makers, when they develop a new type of aircraft, to demonstrate that they
can evacuate it within 90 seconds. The test takes place under realistic
emergency conditions, such as cabin darkness, using volunteers who match the
demographics of a typical jet passenger load. The test isn't without risk.
When a prototype of the Airbus A380 was evacuated in a hanger in Hamburg,
Germany, last month, 873 people successfully escaped, but one broke a leg
and 32 others had lesser injuries. Roland Herwig, an FAA spokesman, said
that less realistic simulations, on computers for example, don't provide the
needed reality check. "We feel you actually have to have people and
controlled demographics," Herwig said. Cruise regulators take a different
approach. When a new ship is near delivery, the U.S. Coast Guard inspects it
for safety compliance. Another inspection is made at its first port call in
the United States, where crew competency is also assessed. But the shipyard
doesn't conduct a drill like the one required by airline regulators. After
delivery, crews practice lowering the lifeboats weekly, and the Coast Guard
checks the drill at least twice a year. When passengers board a cruise, they
also go through a drill, which directs them from their cabins to lifeboat
stations. The drills are mandatory but some passengers skip them, Coast
Guard officials say. Few tests have been done to see what happens when
passengers or passenger stand-ins are lowered in lifeboats. While crew
members play passengers in some drills, they tend to be young, male and
spry, while passengers run the gamut of ages and abilities. One realistic
test took place in England, two years after a 1994 ferry disaster in the
Baltic Sea killed 852 people. British authorities evacuated 723 passengers
and 119 crew members from the ferry Stena Invicta, but the exercise took 65
minutes, well beyond the International Maritime Organization standard of 30
minutes for such ships. Ship operators are loath to add passengers to
lifeboat drills. A 2001 report from the Britain's Marine Accident
Investigation Branch found that drills killed 12 seafarers and injured 87
over a 10-year period from 1989 to 1999. The agency safeguards ships in
Britain or dependencies such as Bermuda, where Star Princess is registered.
Fatalities occurred mostly when release hooks slipped, dropping the boats.
The study said the mechanisms were too complicated, and that crews tend to
take shortcuts in drills, thereby learning bad habits. New rules on the way
Starting in July, crews may lower the boats in drills without being in them.
Royal Caribbean Cruises won't change its current practice. Carnival Cruise
Lines is undecided, a spokeswoman said. Industry experts say ships have more
safety features than in the past, including broader corridors and
stairwells, making escape easier. Bigger ships also have more barriers to
halt the spread of fire or flood. But the sheer number of passengers raises
new issues. On the fire-scarred Star Princess, it was three hours before
crews could verify the names of all 2,690 passengers after they had reported
to their muster stations. "It took them quite a bit of time to get through
it," Deutsch said. A spokeswoman said Princess is re-evaluating its roll
call procedures. Michael Crye, president of the cruise industry's trade
association, said even if a ship is burning or sinking, passengers are
better off staying with the ship, which is designed to be "its own best
lifeboat." At the London-based International Maritime Organization, the
Maritime Safety Committee has been working for five years to address the
burgeoning size of cruise ships. At a meeting next month, the panel is
expected to approve new rules. One will say that ships should have redundant
power systems to better insure that they can reach port after a disaster.
Ready for the worst If a ship has to be abandoned, it should remain
habitable for at least three hours, another rule will say. Officials said
the changes are designed to avoid having to pluck thousands of people from
dozens of lifeboats in remote spots where cargo ships that might rescue
cruise passengers have little capacity to recover small craft. "The real
problem is getting the people out of the lifeboats once they are in them,"
said the organization's Westwood-Booth. The cruise industry is taking other
steps to prepare for the worst. At Royal Caribbean Cruises, officials
regularly do disaster exercises in order to coordinate the response of
various departments. Some are done in tandem with the Coast Guard, the FBI
or other agencies. "These are tremendously elaborate drills," spokesman
Michael Sheehan said. Other lines have similar programs. In Canada, the
government and BMT Fleet Technology, an engineering firm, have rigged a mock
cruise ship cabin, corridor and stairway on a mounted platform that can be
tilted with hydraulic rams. Volunteers wearing life jackets are put through
role-playing exercises. Data from the rig are fed into a computer simulation
program used by Lloyd's Register, a safety bureau that verifies ships are
designed to International Maritime Organization standards. Programmers need
help because data from actual emergencies are rare. What about next time?
The last time passengers were evacuated from a cruise ship that left a U.S.
port was in 1995, when the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Celebration caught
fire in the Bahamas. A sister ship, Ecstasy, was dispatched from Miami and
1,760 passengers were moved from one ship to the other in lifeboats. Next
time, safety experts worry conditions might be different. The ship could be
far from land, in heavy seas, or in a rush to evacuate. Jack Polderman, a
retired marine manager, for Lloyds Register, said that the chances of
something going seriously wrong on a cruise ship are small, but not zero.
And because cruise ship evacuations are rare, there's little proof they can
be done without a hitch. "No one knows because it never happens," said
Polderman, who worked on cruise ship projects for Lloyds' Miami office in
the 1990s. "There are drills and people are trained, but how it will work
out no one knows."
.
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