No central agency oversees, inspects cruise ships

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2013 file photo the cruise ship Carnival Triumph is towed into Mobile Bay near Dauphin Island, Ala., Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013. Want to know about a ship's track record for being clean? Want to assess how good or sanitary the food is? It's not that easy to find, in part because there's no one entity or country that oversees or regulates the industry with its fleet of ships that are like mini cities floating at sea. In the case of Carnival Cruise Lines, the owner of the Carnival Triumph that spent days in the Gulf of Mexico disabled after an engine fire, vacationers looking up information about the ship before boarding would have found mostly clean marks and few red flags. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

By CURT ANDERSON

Associated Press / February 16, 2013

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The U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board will lend their expertise to the investigation, but in a support role. The probe will be led by the Bahamas Maritime Authority, where Carnival registers or ‘‘flags’’ some of its ships. The arrangement is commonplace under international maritime law, and it puts U.S. agencies and investigators in a secondary position even though the Triumph and other Carnival ships sail out of U.S. ports with primarily American customers.

Inquiries to Carnival about inspections and foreign flags were met by a response from the Cruise Lines International Association, which represents all of the major cruise lines. Bud Darr, the group’s senior vice president for technical and regulatory affairs, said the industry is ‘‘very heavily regulated,’’ from the way ships are designed to how crews train for emergencies. He said standards are set by the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization.

But Jim Walker, a Miami maritime attorney and author of the www.cruiselaw.com blog, said, ‘‘the IMO guidelines are not law and there is no consequence if the cruise lines ignore the guidelines and recommendations. Customers have no way of knowing whether they are well maintained safely. There is no federal oversight with real teeth.’’

Fires — though not all as major as the Triumph’s — happen virtually every year on cruise ships. There were 79 onboard blazes from 1990 to 2011, according to a list compiled by Ross Klein, a professor who specializes in cruise industry issues at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada.

In 2010, the IMO adopted rules that require any large cruise ship built after July 1 of that year to have a separate, redundant system able to maintain the ship’s propulsion, steering and so forth in case one engine is disabled by fire. The rules also mandate that ships be capable of maintaining basic services such as sanitation, water, food and lights in such circumstances.

The Triumph was built in 1999 and isn’t covered by the rules, as is the case for most ships among major cruise lines. Experts say the Triumph might have been able to limp into port more quickly if it had the newer systems, but retrofitting is costly and time-consuming.

‘‘Provided the emergency generators worked and had enough power, they would have been able to return to port under their own power, but much slower,’’ said Andrew O. Coggins, Jr., a Pace University management professor who focuses on hospitality and tourism industries.

‘‘Once Carnival has evaluated the full cost of this incident,’’ he added, ‘‘it might be cost effective to retrofit their older ships.’’

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Associated Press writers Connie Cass in Washington and Bruce Smith in Charleston, S.C., contributed to this report.

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On the Internet:

Coast Guard cruise ship inspections database: http://cgmix.uscg.mil/PSIX/PSIXSearch.aspx

CDC Vessel Sanitation Program: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/

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Follow Curt Anderson on Twitter: http://Twitter.com/Miamicurt.