Scandinavian Star
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The Scandinavian Star was a 142 meter long ferry . She was given the name Scandinavian Star in 1984 while chartered for the shipping company Scandinavian World Cruises .
From 1990 she operated the regular service Oslo ( Norway ) - Frederikshavn ( Denmark ) return for "DA-NO Linjen" . On April 7, 1990, a fire on the ship led to a catastrophe with 159 deaths.
history
The ship was built in 1971 by the French shipyard Dubigeon-Normandie in Nantes as Massalia and drove for the Compagnie de Paquebots on the route Marseille, Málaga and Casablanca as well as on cruises in the Mediterranean. In the 1980s it changed hands and was called Stena Baltica and Island Fiesta before it was named Scandinavian Star and drove between Tampa in Florida and Cozumel in Mexico on behalf of Scandinavian World Cruises. A fire broke out on board on March 15, 1988: the ship, which was operated by Sea Escape, was on a Caribbean cruise with 439 passengers and 268 crew members . A fire broke out in the engine room and caused the ship to float in the sea without propulsion. The passengers had to endure 40 hours without running water and electricity while the ship was towed to Cancun, some 60 nautical miles away.
bad luck
On the night of April 7, 1990, the Scandinavian Star, coming from Oslo, was en route to Frederikshavn in Skagerrak with 383 passengers and 99 crew members . The ferry had started operating on this route just a week earlier, on April 1, 1990, after it had previously been used as a casino ship in the Caribbean . The Scandinavian Star went at that time for the shipping company Dano-line as an inexpensive alternative to the large and often expensive competitors. Many holidaymakers therefore also used their caravans and mobile homes on the car deck as a cabin replacement during the crossing . Around two o'clock in the morning there was a sudden fire alarm. The crew of the ferry flying the Bahamas flag, consisting of different nationalities, was inexperienced and overwhelmed with fire protection. Hardly any crew member spoke a Scandinavian language, and many also spoke only limited English. In addition, there was an insufficient number of crew members and therefore a very high overtime load .
Several fires were started on the ship on the night of the accident. First (around 1:55 a.m.) some burning blankets were discovered that could be extinguished by a passenger. After that (around 2:00 a.m.) a second fire started and spread quickly. In both cases, combustible material was initially collected by the perpetrator at the scene of the fire. The fire alarm triggered by the bridge was not heard everywhere on the ship. At 2:26 a.m. the ship radioed Mayday . The Swedish ferry Stena Saga arrived at the scene of the accident a quarter of an hour after the call for help. The evacuation to the lifeboats was initiated and the captain then wrongly confirmed the complete evacuation of passengers and crew. At around 5:30 a.m., the fire brigade began to extinguish the ship, which also found survivors on board and rescued them.
The ship was towed to Lysekil harbor for the fire fighting . During the transfer to Lysekil, the fire water supply was interrupted for 30 minutes in order to use the pumps to bilge the ship, as a result of which the fire regained strength.
159 people were killed in the accident. Most of the fatalities did not die in the fire, but from the poisonous smoke gases.
The investigators later came across hair-raising errors in crisis management - there were neither automatic fire alarm systems nor sprinkler systems on board the ferry . The fact that the fire could spread so quickly and rage across several decks had several reasons: First, the asbestos panels installed for fire protection were painted from combustible materials. In addition, the activated ventilation system of the car deck led to a chimney effect in the stairwell, as a number of fire doors on the car deck were open, which allowed the fire to spread rapidly and thus advance from the third lower deck to the upper deck. The rescue work was also made more difficult by the lack of complete lists of passengers and crew.
Possible Cause
Arson is believed to be the cause. Among the dead was a Danish passenger (a truck driver) who had multiple convictions for arson and who is considered the perpetrator by the Norwegian authorities. However, due to the death of the person, the investigation into him was closed. However, this version is doubted by some, because according to the autopsy report, the Dane was heavily intoxicated with a blood alcohol content of 1.7 per thousand and died after only a few breaths from the smoke gas without being exposed to the smoke gas himself for a long time. It is also doubted that in his condition he would have been able to selectively assemble combustible material. At least the strategically favorable opening of the fire doors and switching on the ventilation system of the vehicle deck was not possible for the Dane.
The fire in 1990 was not assessed as a possible insurance fraud , even though investigations on a sister ship showed that the open fire doors and the ventilation system switched on were oxidising. The ownership of the ship at the time of the accident is opaque. The shipping company "DA-NO Linjen" was not officially in possession of the ship. They had bought the ferry shortly before from Sea Escape, which is based in the Bahamas , but had not yet transferred the purchase price, so Sea Escape collected the insurance amount. According to experts, this was too high for the ship at 24 million euros.
The insufficiently trained crew (it consisted of Scandinavians, Portuguese and Filipinos), who had only been trained on the ship for about two weeks, was also decisive for the high number of victims on the Scandinavian Star . A fire drill was never carried out before the line went into operation. Furthermore, there were communication difficulties, since large parts of the crew could neither speak a Scandinavian language nor English. Originally the Scandinavian Star was a casino ship, which was anchored off Miami with a different and longer-trained crew and made short cruises from there.
In April 2013, the foundation “Etterforskningen av Mordbrannen på Scandinavian Star”, an organization of the victims' survivors, presented a new report on the cause of the accident. The investigation, which was carried out by Norwegian and Swedish experts, found clear evidence that the fire was started jointly by several members of the crew with the aim of insurance fraud. The report states that there were at least four arson attacks on the ship, with the suspect passenger having died after the second fire. The crew also smashed large windows and dragged mattresses and other easily combustible material into the corridors. In addition, the ventilation system was manipulated so that the fire could spread to the maximum. The report also cites testimonies according to which the chief machinist is said to have received a large sum of money (800,000 kroner, corresponding to around 100,000 euros) in an envelope after the accident. In the report, which partially reconstructs what happened, the hypothesis is put forward that some crew members on behalf of the ship - there were still several Sea Escape employees on board - were supposed to have deliberately started fires and sabotaged extinguishing efforts, initially with their intention had been to achieve an evacuation of the ship after a minor fire. The second fire then got completely out of control. The survivors' organization is seeking another police investigation.
After the accident, the Danish shipowner, his managing director and the captain were each sentenced to six months' imprisonment because of the safety deficiencies they were responsible for.
In March 2015, the Norwegian Storting decided to lift the statute of limitations for arson so that a criminal investigation and prosecution remains possible.
The case was reopened in 2014 after a panel of experts suspected that members of the crew had started the fire in order to collect compensation from the insurance company. In 2016, the police stopped the investigation. She said she had gone through 60,000 pages of documents again, interviewed 70 witnesses and involved 18 countries on five continents in the new research.
consequences
In December 1992 the World Shipping Organization ( IMO) changed the SOLAS regulations for fire protection on ships in view of the Scandinavian Star disaster . SOLAS stands for Safety of Life at Sea - a catalog of rules that is kept up to date by the UN shipping organization and which has its origins in the Titanic disaster. After the Scandinavian Star disaster, the introduction of automatic fire alarm systems , fire extinguishing systems and automatically closing fire doors and ventilation shafts for passenger ships with more than 36 passengers was prescribed worldwide . Since then there have been repeated fires on ferries and cruise ships in Europe - but the effects have never been as dramatic as in April 1990.
However, direct control over whether IMO regulations are implemented is a national responsibility.
monument
On April 7, 2006, a memorial was inaugurated in Oslo near the fortress quay, which is now used by cruise ships , showing a mother with two children and listing the names of 158 victims.
Further whereabouts
After the fire, the ship was auctioned in 1994, renamed Regal Voyager and rebuilt in Italy ; In the following years she was mainly used as a ferry in charter for various shipping companies, most recently from 1999 to 2004 for Ferries del Caribe on the route Santo Domingo ( Dominican Republic ) to San Juan (Puerto Rico) . In 2004, the ship was sold to an Indian scrapping yard in Alang , where scrapping began in May of the same year.
literature
- Frank Binder: Ferry fire: New investigations required . In: Daily port report of April 9, 2013, p. 14
Web links
- Reaction of the IMO (English)
- Scandinavian Star on Faktaomfartyg.se (Swedish)
- Fire inspector unpacks: Crew set fire to "Scandinavian Star"
Footnotes
- ^ A b Tore Solheim, Magne Lorentsen, Per Kristian Sundnes, Gisle Bang & Lasse Bremnes: The “Scandinavian Star” ferry disaster 1990 - a challenge to forensic odontology. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine . Volume 104, Issue 6, 1992, DOI: 10.1007 / BF01369554 , pp. 339-345.
- ↑ Cruise Ship Ordeal Ends As 457 Land In Tampa , Orlando Sentinel, March 18, 1988
- ↑ Lethal fire deliberately set on ferry? , Frankfurter Rundschau, April 8, 2013
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Sara Lundin: Branden på M / S Scandinavian Star . In Sveriges radio P3 . May 1, 2009 (audio; 74 min)
- ^ Coffee in the Salon , In: Der Spiegel , No. 16/1990, April 16, 1990, pp. 170/171.
- ↑ Hannes Gamillscheg Deliberately set deadly fire on ferry? Frankfurter Rundschau, April 8, 2013
- ^ Philip Alan Lote, Amund Aune Nilsen, Peter Svaar & Gunn Evy Auestad: Mener mannskap donates brannen på «Scandinavian Star» . In: NRK Nyheter . April 5, 2013
- ↑ André Anwar: Scandinavian Star: Did 159 people die because the crew set their ferry on fire? In: The time . April 7, 2013
- ↑ [1] Storting, Representantforslag om fjerning av foreldingsfristen for bread på straffelova § 148 first ledd first point about other alternative penalties (murder fire paragraphs)
- ↑ Puzzle with 159 dead