The Scandinavian Star Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

2 days ago

"On the 7th of April, 1990, the MS Scandinavian Star – a passenger and vehicle ferry – was on its way from Oslo in Norway to Frederikshavn in Denmark..."

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Transcript

00:00On the 7th of April, 1990, the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger and vehicle ferry, was on its

00:19way from Oslo in Norway to Frederikshavn in Denmark when a fire began on board. At the time

00:26the ship carried 395 passengers and 97 crew. Approximately one-third of the people on board

00:33would not live to see the morning. An extremely high death toll, which, it was found, could be

00:39attributed in large part to the dilapidated and ill-maintained state of the ship. The Scandinavian

00:48Star started life as the MS Marsalia, built in 1971. It was a fairly large ship amongst those

00:57of its type, with eight decks for passengers and vehicles and capacity enough to carry 1,152 people

01:04in total. Onboard facilities included a sun lounge, a restaurant, a discotheque, and many passenger

01:12cabins of varying classes and levels of comfort. The vessel was put to work as a cruise ship,

01:20carrying passengers between destinations in the Mediterranean and then later in the Caribbean.

01:25Like many ships she changed hands several times over the course of her life,

01:30spending brief periods under different names. One year she was the Island Fiesta, and the next

01:36the Stena Baltica. It was 1984 before she became the Scandinavian Star, a name which seemed to stick.

01:46For a few years she ran cruises off the coast of Florida and further afield down to Mexico,

01:52before being sold in March of 1990 to Wundmannsruhten, a Dutch company who put her to work ferrying

01:58passengers between Norway and Denmark. Just one month after being acquired by Wundmannsruhten

02:05a severe fire would almost put an end to her days on the water. This fire began on Deck 3,

02:11just after two o'clock in the morning of the 7th of April 1990. Smoke was spotted by a passenger

02:18who quickly reported it to a member of staff. By the time the captain was made aware of the emergency

02:24the fire had made good inroads to Decks 4 and 5, and was spreading rapidly from there.

02:30An evacuation began. A chaotic, ineffective evacuation. The problems faced by those on board

02:37were numerous. For starters, many passengers weren't even woken up by the fire alarm.

02:44The bells were placed so far apart and so far away from some cabins that the sound they made

02:50was simply nowhere near loud enough to be heard over the normal background noise of the ship.

02:55For those that were fortunate enough to be woken by an alarm, escape was difficult. The Scandinavian

03:02star had been refitted many times during her lifespan, leaving her with numerous dead ends

03:07and confusing corridors, including routes which looked as though they should lead to an exit

03:13but instead simply sent panicking passengers back into the belly of the ship. Passengers undoubtedly

03:20looked to the crew to help them evacuate, but here again they were out of luck. The ship had

03:26been acquired only a month ago, leaving no time for the brand new crew to be trained or familiarized

03:32with it. Many crew members were as lost as passengers were, and crucially few of them shared

03:39a common language. The vast majority of passengers were Norwegian, and the vast majority of the crew

03:46could not speak Norwegian, or English, or Dutch. Communication difficulties made an already fraught

03:54situation significantly more deadly. None of this should have mattered, of course. The ship was

04:02supposed to be fireproof, and yes, most of the materials used for the interior of the ship were

04:08designed to resist flame, but these had in many places been coated with a thin layer of decorative

04:14veneer made of melamine resin, a material that was not only highly flammable but which produced

04:22poisonous gases on combustion. Other fire safety features simply weren't up to code.

04:29Sprinklers had rusted over and many fire doors didn't shut securely. These small but significant

04:36details had earned the owners of the ship a stern warning during its last inspection,

04:41but for some reason it had still been issued with the insurance necessary to take on passengers

04:47and set sail. With all these factors working against passengers on board the burning ship

04:53the captain was perhaps the one person who might have been able to help.

04:58However, the captain wasn't there. After making some brief efforts to isolate the fire

05:04he had been among the first people to evacuate into a lifeboat. He'd even gone so far as to

05:10tell rescuers that he believed everyone had managed to get off the ship, when in fact hundreds

05:16still remained on board. Firefighters made their way out to the burning Scandinavian Star.

05:23They boarded and set up a command post on the deck of the ship while tugboats towed it back

05:28towards a small port on the Swedish coast where fireboats could safely approach and damp down the

05:33flames. Within a day the fire was brought under control, but it was too late for many on board.

05:42158 were dead, many of them killed while sheltering in their cabins.

05:50An investigation was launched. There was no doubt at all that the ship had been in poor condition

05:56and that the evacuation had been botched in multiple ways, but investigators revealed a

06:02further shocking possibility. There was evidence that the fire had in fact been caused deliberately.

06:10Multiple points of ignition were found, with evidence that a person

06:13or several persons had intentionally set a fire at each of these points.

06:20Suspicion fell upon Eric Anderson, a truck driver who had been aboard as a passenger

06:25and who had perished in the fire. He had a history of arson, and so for many years was

06:31considered to be the most likely culprit. It wasn't until 2014, however, that it was concluded

06:38that he had actually died fairly early on in the disaster, and that multiple attempts to start an

06:43additional fire had been made after his death. He was ruled out, with a later report noting that it

06:50was likely that many people had worked together to set the fires, and that these people probably

06:56had a good working knowledge of the ship. In this new light the captain's swift escape and the

07:03tragic disorganized evacuation started to seem more sinister. Could the newly purchased ship

07:10have been deliberately set on fire? It could, some posited, have been an attempt to scupper the vessel

07:16in order to claim on the insurance policy taken out against it, an insurance policy the value of

07:21which had recently been doubled despite no noticeable increase in the actual value of the

07:27ship. As it stands it remains uncertain to this day who started the fires on board the Scandinavian

07:34Star, and what their motive was for doing so. Further investigations are underway. What's

07:41certain, however, is that regardless of cause those on board would have stood a better chance

07:47of survival if the ship and its fire safety equipment had been maintained as it should have

07:52been. As with many maritime accidents, the fire on board the Scandinavian Star resulted in a

07:59comprehensive review of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, and a tightening of regulations for

08:04similar ships around the world. As for the Scandinavian Star, she was renamed again,

08:11this time to The Candy, a name clearly chosen for convenience as the change was affected simply by

08:19painting over part of the previous name. She was then towed to Southampton in the UK, where she

08:25was laid up for four years. She did sail again under yet another new name, The Regal Voyager,

08:33but limped on for only another 10 years before she was finally sold for scrap.

08:38Even 20 years on, the fire on board the Scandinavian Star casts a long shadow.

08:46The relatives of the victims want answers. Why were their friends and family, their children

08:52and loved ones lost in such a needless and inexplicable way? If, as seems increasingly

08:59likely, the fire was a crime rather than an accident, then who is responsible? These things

09:07remain to be discovered. A memorial in Lusashill, the Swedish port where the ship was towed to

09:14extinguish the fire, preserves the memory of those who were lost. But there is another legacy to this

09:20disaster, one of ongoing, painstaking work. Journalists and investigators, legislators and

09:29government officials have over the years poured thousands of hours into bringing about further

09:34investigations into a slow and incremental search for the truth. If answers to the questions

09:41surrounding the fire on board the Scandinavian Star are ever to be known, it will be through

09:46the patient efforts of hundreds of people who refuse to let the incident be forgotten.

10:04you

The Scandinavian Star Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

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