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…