SS Norway Blast
Kills Eight Crew Members
Norwegian Cruise Lines - May 25, 2003
The death trap SS Norway, out of commission since a blast on May 25, 2003, already sold for scrap was at the center of a Florida criminal investigation into the deaths of eight crew members who died on the cruise ship. The questions posed, was Norwegian Cruise Line criminally negligent in the deaths of the crew members and the injury to ten others while the ship was in the Port of Miami?
This week, a Florida court decided the cruise line was grossly negligent, and has made the cruise line liable for a minimum $500,000 in fines.
The U.S. attorney's office said Norwegian agreed to plead guilty to the criminal charge, which alleges the cruise line operated the vessel in a "grossly negligent manner that endangered the lives, limbs and property of the persons on board.''
Coast Guard Rear Admiral Robert Branham called the May 25, 2003, explosion a "preventable tragedy.''
A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the accident showed NCL engineers had expressed concerns for a number of years about the condition of the boilers aboard SS Norway. The massive high-pressure boilers, each holding 20 tons of 528-degree water, had a history of cracks, leaks, corrosion and repairs.
''We must realize that we have reached a point where the operation of the vessel is not safe,'' one unnamed NCL port engineer wrote in a 1998 e-mail to the company's vice president of ship operations, the NTSB report said. The engineer cited ''numerous boiler tube failures'' that were subsequently repaired.
In January and July 2002, a year before the boiler burst, NCL port engineers e-mailed NCL management with concerns that the ship's routes and busy schedules forced crew to fire up and cool down the boilers more rapidly than the operating manual called for.
The cruise line was charged in an ''information,'' not a criminal complaint or indictment. That means Norwegian executives and prosecutors negotiated the misdemeanor charge.
''Charges such as those today are necessary to show that companies operating and managing ships have a duty to take reasonable measures to assure the safety of all onboard, passengers and crew,'' said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta.
Miami attorney Charles Lipcon says, ''I'm pleased to see that the U.S. attorney stepped up to the plate and got involved,'' he said. But he called it ''unfortunate'' that the crew members and their families were not able to press civil lawsuits against Norwegian in federal court in Miami.
The dead and injured seamen were mostly Filipino. Their contracts with Norwegian called for settling claims in arbitration, so their lawsuits were dismissed from federal court in Miami. The cruise line negotiated settlements afterward.
