Blazes at cruise liners spur calls for scrutiny

[NEW YORK] One of the largest cruise ships in 1985 was the 46,000-tonne Carnival Holiday. Ten years ago, the biggest, the Queen Mary 2, was three times as large. Today's record holders are two 225,000-tonne ships whose displacement, a measure of a ship's weight, is about the same as that of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

Cruise ships keep getting bigger, and more popular. The Cruise Lines International Association said that last year its North American cruise line members carried about 17 million passengers, up from seven million in 2000. But the expansion in ship size is worrying safety experts, lawmakers and regulators, who are pushing for more accountability, saying the supersize craze is fraught with potential peril for passengers and crew.

"Cruise ships operate in a void from the standpoint of oversight and enforcement," said James Hall, a safety management consultant and the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board between 1994 and 2001. "The industry has been very fortunate until now."