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For the past three decades cruising has been the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry. Eleven new ships were christened last year, and almost 21 million people went on a cruise. Statistically, cruising is relatively safe, but recent failures in seamanship, emergency response, and engineering should sound an alarm. Introduce bad weather or remote surroundings into the equation and an incident like the Costa Concordia shipwreck, which made international headlines two years ago, could result in hundreds of deaths.

Compared with other areas where technology and human behavior impact passenger safety—notably, aviation—the cruise industry is poorly regulated. It has no clear equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration, which has a broad mandate to ensure air safety. The U.S. Coast Guard conducts prescheduled, biannual inspections of ships that embark passengers at U.S. ports, but most cruise ships are registered, or flagged, overseas, and critics charge that regulations are poorly enforced. Cruise lines have started instituting reforms, but more needs to be done.

THE PROBLEM:

Crew Incompetence

The January 2012 grounding of the Carnival-owned megaship Costa Concordia left 32 dead, 157 injured, and a hulking, disintegrating eyesore beached like a whale off the coast of Tuscany, Italy. It started with ego: Capt. Francesco Schettino swung the ship and its 4229 passengers and crew close to shore on an unsanctioned "salute" to the island of Giglio. The vessel hit submerged rocks, which ripped a nearly 200-foot gash in the hull.

The crew never contacted rescue authorities, who found out about the accident from relatives of panicked passengers. And the abandon-ship order didn't come until 10:54 pm, more than an hour after the collision. The captain himself had already escaped the foundering vessel. "You've abandoned ship!? Get the [expletive] on board!" Italian coast guard captain Gregorio De Falco bellowed when he finally reached Schettino by phone.

The crew didn't perform much better: The industry standard for the evacuation of a vessel is 30 minutes, but hours into the incident there were still dozens of passengers on board.

Given the astounding incompetence displayed during the tragedy, it was largely luck that casualties weren't higher. "The Concordia basically tipped over within swimming distance of shore," says Walt Nadolny, chair of the department of marine transportation at New York's SUNY Maritime College. In fact, some passengers did swim to safety. "It would have played out totally differently" in tougher conditions, he says. If the 3780-passenger Costa Pacifica, a sister ship to the Concordia, had struck a rock on the remote northern coast of Norway, where it travels each summer, passengers would have faced 48 F seas and a lengthy wait for help.

THE SOLUTION In response to the Concordia debacle, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA)—an industry group whose 26 members represent all of the major cruise companies—ordered a broad safety review led by outside experts, including former heads of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the European Maritime Safety Agency. The effort resulted in 10 new rules to improve crew communication and training. For instance, all bridge officers are to be thoroughly briefed on the passage plan, which includes every detail of a vessel's route; visitors are prohibited from the bridge during critical times; and a lifeboat is to be filled to capacity with crew members during a training drill at least every six months.

It remains to be seen how closely the new rules will be followed; compliance is essentially voluntary. Meanwhile, government oversight is weak. Carnival, which owns 10 lines and controls half of the world cruise market with more than 100 ships, is headquartered in Florida. But the majority of the company's ships—including all of the Carnival-branded vessels—are flagged either in the Bahamas, Panama, or Bermuda. Bill Doherty, a retired safety manager for Norwegian Cruise Line, one of the few big lines not owned by Carnival, is among a number of experts who call these flags of convenience, where labor laws and other regulations are relatively lax.

THE PROBLEM:

Breakdowns and Blackouts

In February 2013 the Carnival Triumph was 150 miles off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico when a fuel line leak led to a fire in the aft engine room. It quickly knocked out power to the ship's six diesel–electric engines, which provide electrical power as well as propulsion. The backup diesel generator could run emergency lights but not the ship's hotel load, which includes lighting and plumbing in the cabins. While the company worked to secure a tow back to port in Mobile, Ala., more than 4000 passengers spent five days in discomfort and squalor as toilets overflowed and hot buffets were replaced with canned food.

Such incidents are surprisingly common. A similar fire in 2010 left passengers on board the Carnival Splendor without power off the Pacific coast of Mexico. In March 2013 the Carnival Elation experienced a steering problem on the Mississippi River and required a tug escort. Just days later the Carnival Dream suffered power and plumbing problems as the result of a generator malfunction while at port in St. Maarten.

None of these incidents resulted in loss of life, but the outcome could have been far different. What if a tropical storm had developed while the Triumph floated in the Gulf without steering or propulsion? What if a cruise ship lost power during bad weather in Alaska's remote Inside Passage? Either scenario could turn misfortune into catastrophe.

THE SOLUTION Television commercials for Royal Caribbean's huge Oasis-class ships—which can carry close to 8500 passengers and crew—make Walt Nadolny cringe. "I think, oh, my God, that's not a ship, that's a city. What happens when the power goes out? Is there enough backup to run the galleys and the refrigeration and the sewage treatment plant?" An international maritime standard called Safe Return to Port, which went into effect in 2010, requires that new ships include backup systems that would allow a vessel to limp back to shore in the event of a fire or other emergency. But given the 30-year life span of the typical cruise ship, an aggressive plan to retrofit existing ships is needed. Carnival is making progress in this area. In April 2013 the company hired a new vice president of technical operations, a former Coast Guard commander named Mark Jackson, and launched a comprehensive upgrade of its 24 Carnival-brand ships—the line that has experienced the most mishaps in recent years. Jackson ordered engineers to reroute miles of cable on each ship to reduce the risk that a fire in one engine room could take out power to the entire ship. Fire suppression is being improved by adding a 24-hour patrol dedicated to scanning for oil and fuel leaks—standard procedure on military ships. The number of nozzles in engine-room sprinkler systems that could be operated at one time is being increased from 30 to 250, and the company is adding another line of backup generators, capable of carrying a portion of the hotel load. "If the Triumph incident had happened today," Jackson says, "the detection system would have identified the leak sooner, automatically released the high fog [sprinkler system], and no fire would have occurred." The upgrade project will cost an estimated $300 million.

THE PROBLEM:

Poor Passenger Training

International law calls for passengers to receive a safety briefing within 24 hours of a ship leaving port, but that can be too late. About 700 of the Costa Concordia's 3206 passengers had boarded just a couple of hours before the accident; their safety briefing was scheduled for the next day. When things went bad, passengers had no idea where to go or what to do. But the timing of drills isn't the only issue that needs to be addressed. Mike Inman, the vice president of safety for Holland America, another large cruise line owned by Carnival, says that passenger attendance at muster drills hasn't always been enforced. "Holland America was one of the first lines to make it mandatory, and we have disembarked people who did not attend," he says. (Even before the Concordia wreck, Holland America held drills before its ships left port.)

THE SOLUTION Since February 2012 all CLIA cruise lines have pledged to conduct passenger muster drills before leaving port. Technology can help too. In October 2013 Danish safety-equipment company Viking announced the creation of a self-propelled, inflatable raft that holds 200 people and has a chute-like system to ease boarding for children, the elderly, and the injured. The LifeCraft could be on ships within two years; such advances could save lives. "How you get the person in the life raft is the most important part," Nadolny says. "Lifeboat injuries are probably the biggest killer of crew out there. It's a fairly complicated arrangement for lifting and lowering the boat, and if it's not done just right, well, the boat drops and everybody in the boat gets killed." That's what happened last year in Spain's Canary Islands during a drill on a cruise ship called the Thomson Majesty. Cables snapped, killing five crew members and injuring three more.

THE PROBLEM:

Security Holes

Every few weeks someone goes overboard on a cruise ship. Most of those are likely suicides. Other incidents are accidents, often fueled by free-flowing alcohol. An unknown number are murders that will never be solved. Onboard crime is often slow to be reported and is poorly investigated. The reason is that while many ships are the size of a small town, they don't operate like any well-governed municipality on land. "Look at a cruise ship as a city. The captain acts as mayor. What you don't have is a police force," says Kendall Carver, founder of the nonprofit International Cruise Victims Association.

In 2004 his daughter Merrian vanished from a Royal Caribbean cruise in Alaska. Though a steward informed the captain that she hadn't been in her room for five days, no attempt was made to look for her, and the cruise line never reported her missing. Since then Carver has lobbied ship owners to raise railing heights, install cameras and sensing devices that would detect man- overboard accidents, and ensure that alleged crimes are promptly and thoroughly investigated.

In 2010 Carver's group won a seeming victory: Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, a law aimed at protecting passengers' rights on any ship that docks in the United States. But the law has proved to be a disappointment.

"We look at it as a feel-good piece of legislation," says Doherty, the retired safety manager. "There are no real penalties for shipowners for violations." Carver cites several major problems. First, the original language of the bill would have required the Coast Guard to maintain online listings of all crimes reported on each ship. But at the last minute it was changed to include only crimes that had been investigated and closed by the FBI. "Instead of reporting hundreds of crimes, 15 or 16 crimes are all that's being reported," Carver says. In addition, he says, cruise lines are failing to follow the law's mandate to inform victims that they can report crimes directly to the FBI.

THE SOLUTION The 2010 Safety Act requires cruise ships to install systems that recognize when someone has jumped, fallen, or been pushed off a ship, if that technology is available. Several companies, including Virginia's Seafaring Security Services and Radio Zeeland, based in Florida, make sensing systems designed to distinguish a body-size mass from anything else—beer cans, beach balls, deck chairs—that drops overboard. The systems can sound an alarm on the bridge, rewind video footage to several seconds before the fall, and record the coordinates so that the crew can launch an immediate rescue. The companies say their own testing shows their systems are reliable, but Carnival director of maritime security Barry Marushi disagrees. "We're looking for a 95 percent detection rate," says Marushi. He says that seabirds can cause false alarms and that the sensors cannot stand up to prolonged exposure to sun, salt, and wave action. "As it stands right now, it has not met those standards that we set."

To resolve this impasse, the industry should fund testing to determine whether the systems are ready now—and push the technology ahead if not. Meanwhile, many ships do not even have video coverage that would reveal a man-overboard accident, leaving agonized families never knowing exactly what happened to a vanished loved one.

None of the problems the cruise industry faces are intractable. Rigorous crew training, better life-raft technology, man-overboard detectors, improved fire-suppression systems—these are all manageable goals. It's up to the cruise ship industry to push harder to fix its problems. And it may be time for passengers to take more responsibility for their own safety, regarding ships as more like airplanes and less like resorts, despite the buffets and swimming pools. Because there's one big difference: Hotels can't sink.

Know Before You Go

The appeal of a cruise vacation is that once you're booked, you don't have to think about a hinge. It's wise to make an exception when it comes to your family's personal safety.

1. Select a safe ship.

Vessels that have come into service since 2010 meet stringent international Safe Return to Port requirements to ensure that an engine-room fire doesn't knock out power to the entire vessel. For information on sanitation you can check the Centers for Disease Control's report card on cruise ships at cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/.

2. Take drills seriously.

In an emergency you want to know where to muster, or gather; where to find spare life jackets; how to interpret alarms; and how to enter a lifeboat. Always know where you are on the ship—and pay attention to fire alarms. Most serious shipboard incidents are the result of fires.

3. Supervise children.

Cruise ships generally do not employ lifeguards: In October 2013 a 6-year-old Florida boy drowned in a swimming pool during a Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Victory. A few months earlier a 4-year-old had suffered severe brain damage after a near-drowning accident on a Disney ship.

4. And teenagers.

According to the International Cruise Victims Association, sexual assault is the most common crime reported on cruise ships, and many of the victims are teenagers. For more information visit the organization's website, internationalcruisevictims.org.

5. Don't drink alone.

Alcohol flows free and heavy on a lot of ships—that's part of the appeal for many passengers. But being alone and intoxicated are both risk factors for man-overboard incidents. You can consultcruisejunkie.com to learn more about man-overboard accidents.

6. Know your rights.

When you step on board a cruise ship, you are effectively entering a foreign country; U.S. laws do not apply. But, thanks to the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, crime victims can go directly to the FBI for help. Call (202) 324-3000 to report a crime.

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