Microsoft Office 2003 Norwegian Cruise
Correction Appended Four crew members were killed and at least 17 others were injured this morning in an explosion and fire in a boiler room of the Norway, a cruise ship that had just docked in Miami after a week in the Caribbean, rescue officials said. None of the 2,135 passengers aboard the ship, owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines, were injured and all were evacuated without incident, the officials said.
The Miami-Dade police said the explosion did not appear to be a terrorist act. 'There is no indication whatsoever of any criminal activity,' Police Director Carlos Alvarez said. 'At this time, it appears to be a very tragic accident.' ' Fifteen injured crew members were taken to nearby Jackson Memorial Hospital after the blast, which occurred about 6:30 a.m., nearly two hours after the 41-year-old ship pulled into port, the Coast Guard said. 'All are burn victims with varying degrees of burns,' said Conchita Ruiz-Topinka, a hospital spokeswoman.
Microsoft Office 2003 Norwegian Cruise Reviews
'Eight of those were pretty bad burns.' More than 100 police officers and more than 100 firefighters from Miami and Miami Beach were dispatched to the port to help evacuate the passengers and crew and treat the injured. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to investigate. 'It was the steam line that blew,' Petty Officer Roger Krass of the Coast Guard said this evening in Miami. 'It is still under investigation as to the exact cause.' ' Norwegian Cruise Line issued a statement saying that the company was 'deeply saddened by the deaths' and announcing that it was canceling the next scheduled cruise of the Norway, scheduled for this afternoon. Each passenger on the canceled cruise will receive a refund and a credit of equal value for a future cruise, the statement said.
Most passengers were asleep when the Norway docked at the Port of Miami around 4:30 a.m. Passengers reported being awakened by the explosion or by an announcement over the ship's public address system ordering them to report to emergency evacuation stations.
'I was sleeping and I jumped out of bed,' said Connie McGuire of Indianapolis, who was traveling with her husband, Everett, and their son and daughter-in-law. 'All the lights went out and the air went off,' she said. McGuire said: 'We felt it, we heard it. It was pitch-black in our room. Our room service guy was banging on our door saying everyone needed to go up to their stations.'
' Rich and Gail Zwakenberg of Reno, Nev., heard a loud thump in their cabin. 'It sounded like the ship had hit the pier,' Ms. Zwakenberg said.
She said that when she reached the evacuation station, another passenger reported having seen a man on fire, his skin melting from his body. After he debarked, Mr. Zwakenberg turned to notice a huge, steady plume of smoke billowing from the ship. 'It's amazing that something can happen so fast like that,' he said. The fleeing passengers did not have to go through standard immigration procedures, Mr. Zwakenberg said.
Instead, they were told that their luggage would be delivered to their homes. Two years ago, Norwegian Cruise Line was forced to cancel a Norway cruise after the Coast Guard found more than 100 safety violations during an inspection, including numerous leaks in the ship's sprinkler system. Petty Officer Burns said that in the last inspection of the ship, on May 15, 'no discrepancies' were reported. Last year, Norwegian Cruise Line was part of a crackdown on cruise ship pollution when it and the three other large cruise lines pleaded guilty to intentionally polluting the waters in which they operated. Norwegian agreed to pay a $1 million fine after acknowledging that it had dumped oil overboard and falsified its records to conceal the pollution.
An employee at Norwegian said that spokesmen for the company were unavailable for comment during the holiday weekend. The National Transportation Safety Board has for years had concerns about fire safety standards on cruise ships. The agency has recommended some changes to alarm and other fire safety systems on the ships in recent years in response to fires on cruise line ships in the 1990's. But a spokesman for the agency said today that he was unsure of how many of the upgrades had been made and on how many ships.
'There had been some recommendations that came out of it,' said Ted Lopatkiewitz, a spokesman for the safety board. 'I don't know if any individual lines are actually doing it,' he added, referring to implementing the recommendations. As for the Norway, many passengers showed up at the port this afternoon for its next sail not knowing that their cruise had been canceled.
Minecraft adventure map uncharted territory. Advertisement One woman who was planning to sail the Norway today said that Norwegian crew members seemed reluctant to say what was happening. 'The first lady we found said she couldn't tell us what happened,' said Beth Goble of Colorado Springs, who was planning to sail with eight relatives and friends.
'We were all spread out trying to figure out what was going on. The second lady we talked to told us that something in the boiler room happened and the ship would not be sailing this week.' Goble added: 'We started working on this trip in January and spent a month and a half coordinating everything, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.'
' Correction: May 27, 2003, Tuesday A picture of the soot-covered deck of the cruise ship Norway yesterday with an article about an explosion on board carried an incorrect credit in some copies. It was by Getty Images, not Reuters. Correction: May 30, 2003, Friday An article on Monday about an explosion on the cruise ship Norway misspelled the surname of a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board and misstated the context for a remark about shipboard changes that have resulted from the agency's recommendations.
He is Ted Lopatkiewicz, not Lopatkiewitz. His comment, 'I don't know if any individual lines are actually doing it,' referred to installing local-sounding fire alarms, not to carrying out the recommendations in general.