Are Cruise Ships Too Big To Be Safe?

The litany of cruise ship mishaps reached comical proportions in the last 12 months. Well except for the fact that it isn’t funny when ships catch fire and passengers’ lives are imperiled. And the New York Times’ Jad Mouawad is reporting that safety experts say a big part of the problem may be the sheer size of cruise ships today.

Thirty years ago, the biggest cruise ship was 46,000 tons. Today, the biggest cruisers are almost 500 percent bigger – 226,000 tons. They’re cities on the sea, and they need safety and emergency response teams that can handle trouble when it breaks out. As one expert told the Times, ““Given the size of today’s ships, any problem immediately becomes a very big problem.”

The litany of cruise trip tragedy over the last 18 months is headlined by the Costa Concordia disaster; the ship capsized off the coast of Italy, killing 32 people. Then there was the Carnival Triumph’s so-called “cruise from hell” which was stranded in the Gulf of Mexico without power for four days, and a dangerous fire that disabled the Grandeur of the Seas in the Bahamas.

Image courtesy of adelaide.com.au.