Segment 2 Of 2 Previous Hearing Segment(1)
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CRUISE SHIP SAFETY
Thursday, October 7, 1999
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 2253, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Wayne T. Gilchrest [chairman of the subcommittee] Presiding.
Mr. GILCHREST. The Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation will come to order. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on cruise ship safety. What we would like to do is to limit opening statements to five minutes. We have a full room of people, but we don't have a full room of members. So we have plenty of time for testimony and certainly for questions.
I want to thank everyone for joining us today for what I hope will be a serious look at some of the problems affecting our cruise line industry. We will be discussing cruise ship safety, environmental regulations, crime and health care aboard these ships and a closer look at the most recent fires and incidents.
Many of you have seen or heard reports of livid passengers stranded after their dream vacations turned into a nightmare. In addition to fires on board, there have been reports of sexual assaults, criminal violations, inadequate health care and questions about safety. Similar questions and problems have been the subject of hearings in the airline industry and led to the introduction of the Passenger Bill of Rights by the full committee chairman, Mr. Shuster. The airline industry has responded with its own recommendations for improved communications and conduct which I think may be helpful to the cruise industry.
This committee must make sure that we are doing everything possible to protect Americans aboard these vessels. More than 5 million people will take cruises this year, and the number is increasing at a pretty fast rate.
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Last year's fire aboard the cruise ship ECSTASY and the recent fire in the engine room on the TROPICALE in the Gulf of Mexico illustrate the need to review fire safety measures. We also must determine if adequate emergency plans and preparations are in place. While I strongly support the International Maritime Organization and its efforts to promote safety, it may be time to reexamine the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, better known as SOLAS, to ensure that the growth in size of these ships and the numbers of passengers can be properly handled.
While nearly all of the vessels fly foreign flags or flags of convenience, I want to continue to ensure, which basically is the case now, that these vessels follow our laws and that we have adequate enforcement mechanisms when they do not. I am also interested in the environmental rules and regulations that these ocean-going ships must follow. We need to better understand how U.S. and international law mesh to protect not only our citizens but our waterways as well.
I look forward to the testimony this morning of all those witnesses that come to give us the information that we seek. I want to do everything we can to encourage the cruise ship industry, both foreign flag and those flying domestic flags, to continue to do their service to the international community and especially to American citizens. The cruise industry will continue to grow in a way that will be economically favorable for both the U.S. shipbuilding industry, the ports in the United States, and employment for various merchant marine activities. It is a positive thing. This hearing this morning is to ensure that the positive aspects that have surrounded the cruise industry in the past and in the present will continue into the future.
At this point I would like to yield to the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your scheduling the hearing today and wish that we hadn't been bumped to a smaller room. I apologize to the people who are interested for the inconvenience, but some trivial thing that was being done in the Ground Transportation Subcommittee was more important it seemed.
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You are right, Mr. Chairman, there is certainly a growing popularity of cruises, and it is for most Americans a more and more desirable and more and more frequently used option for vacations. So I believe that it is most appropriate that this committee at this time review the measures that are currently in place, how they are enforced and what additional steps should be taken by the United States Government to assure Americans as they go on the cruise of their dreams or the dream vacation of their life that they are safe and sound and that the ship they are on is following environmental laws and generally is what it appears to be.
One of the key concerns and problems I continue to express is Americans do not understand that when they get on these ships that are advertised in the local paper or advertised in the national press, advertised on television, which are crewed by the most visible people at the top, by apparently well-trained, generally American-European officers, that these ships essentially once they sail beyond our territorial limits and our territorial waters are on foreign soil, and their recourse for things that happen on those ships, the principal enforcement mechanisms that come upon those ships for safety and for environmental laws and for crew standards and training, for everything, once they are out in international waters are of the flag state.
Now, how many Americans want to depend upon the professionalism of the Liberian coast guard, which doesn't exist, to enforce those laws and to make them safe or to rescue them in a time of need?
The cruise ship, industry has, and many are doing an excellent job and many are striving for higher stands. The much publicized problem of the rapes that took place, the cruise industry, at least the top of the line ones, have now all said that they are going to fully report all crimes that take place and subject those crimes to investigation by U.S. law enforcement authorities in U.S. ports when returning to our country.
But the bottom line is, God forbid someday one of these ships is hijacked out there in the middle of the ocean. The United States Government, since they don't pay any taxes here and they are not registered here, even though they may be fully complemented by American passengers, has no obligation to respond. It is the government of Liberia, which for most intents and purposes does not exist, the navy of Liberia or some other flag of convenience country.
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This is an enduring concern that I have, and it must be addressed in the most rigorous way possible. We need, Americans need to understand when they go on these ships that they aren't giving up their rights as American citizens and that they can expect the full protection of the laws that we as Americans have come to expect and that these companies will fully protect the environment in addition to protecting their passengers. There are troubling concerns that go to this problem.
The crash in the English Channel, it is being thoroughly investigated by the British authorities. That is good. They are extraordinarily professional people. I know they will do a good job of determining why the cruise ship and the freighter crashed, but unfortunately, unless the flag countries agree, we will never know the results of that investigation. That is perhaps a small point, but it goes to the heart of this issue.
We are continually dependent on, as are the passengers, everybody else, the professionalism and the competency and the goodwill of these foreign nations with these flags of convenience. In the case of environmental laws, our government just gave up bothering to forward complaints to the government of Liberia because they were wasting the international postage. You know, that kind of thing has got to come to a screeching halt.
So I hope to certainly—I would love to bring the ships home to American flags and full coverage of our laws. Absent that, I would like to see them move to countries where there is a competent and professional agency responsible for safety; there is a competent and responsible monitoring of crew training; there is full enforcement of environmental laws; there is a law enforcement agency capable of pursuing crimes aboard ships. And that does not exist in some of these flag of convenience states, and that is something the American public needs to realize, and I believe the American public with their dollars and their wallets will move toward those parts of the industry that are providing those assurances to the cruising public, and we as legislators have to also move the industry in that direction.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the gentleman from Oregon. I just want to make a quick comment, that whatever flag a ship is flying, when it hits the U.S. port it must abide by all U.S. laws. Whether it is a flag of convenience from Liberia, it has to abide by U.S. laws concerning vessel safety, environmental compliance, medical requirements, even the area of criminal justice. So the U.S. requires all vessels, when they reach our ports, if they don't comply with our laws, then we virtually can confiscate their ship.
I will yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, if I could just follow up on that, the key point I am making is that when that ship reaches 12 miles those laws no longer in effect apply. They were in force, they were monitored in the port. The key becomes when they are in the deep ocean, if they go far enough away, then the responsible law enforcement authority, the responsible pollution control authority, all the authority that is to be brought to bear is that of the flag state, not of the United States of America, and we can ask Admiral North about that perhaps if I am in error, but I believe my statement is correct.
Mr. GILCHREST. It is correct to the extent that a ship complies with international law as regulated or created by the International Maritime Organization, and if ships don't comply with the IMO rules, it is difficult for them to get insurance, but there is no need for the two members of us to debate the issue while we are up here. That is why we have witnesses to testify. But I will yield now to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. LOBIONDO. I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling the hearing and associate myself with both your remarks and that of Congressman DeFazio. I think it is an area that we should be looking at because of just the explosion of activity that we have seen with so many people taking advantage of all the different offers, and I am especially interested and thankful for your timing because my daughter and son-in-law are going to be on a cruise in about 2 weeks. So I will report to them the findings of the hearing.
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Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. LoBiondo.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing, and I hope it will be productive. I think it is very important. I am glad to see so many people from the media here because for a number of years now a number of members of both parties have been trying to point out the sweetheart deals that the foreign cruise ship industry has had, and I am glad finally people are paying attention. I am glad to see the media here because I can assure you the foreign cruise ship industry does not want the public to know about the sweetheart deal they have where they pay almost nothing in American taxes despite the fact that they generate about $13 billion in income from Americans. They don't want the public to know about their pollution violations, even though they claim to take people out to see the beautiful ocean. As soon as the sun goes down, the bilge pumps go on, whatever oil, whatever waste is in the water.
And Mr. Chairman, I would like to correct one statement. You said when the ships are in port they are subject to American law. That is not quite true. Foreign cruise ships tie up in places like New Orleans for Super Bowl weekend and maybe even the whole week. And while the hotel on one side of the levy has got to live by the minimum wage laws and the OSHA laws and the wage laws and all the other laws we pass trying to protect the American people, that ship is not paying minimum wage to its crew. It doesn't have to live by the OSHA laws, does not have to live by the pollution laws because it is considered a separate entity. So they have folks living on near starvation wages, working for near starvation wages right across the levy from the hotels that are living by all the rules, right across the levy from the restaurants that are living by all the rules.
Again, in fairness, let us just point this out and this is regular occurrence that happens. They will tie up during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. They will tie up during the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
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Mr. GILCHREST. If the gentleman would yield.
Mr. TAYLOR. Sure.
Mr. GILCHREST. All vessels, including cruise ship vessels, domestic and foreign flagged, must comply with the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act. I can't comment on the wages of the crew, but the environmental regulations must be complied with.
Mr. TAYLOR. I am just trying to point out those things that I know to be true. They are not paying minimum wage. They are not living by the same OSHA laws. They do not abide by the Americans with Disabilities Act. I mean, the list goes on and on.
So, again, I hope this hearing provides an opportunity for the public to become aware of these things, and I hope the public will demand that the United States Congress address these problems because it simply is not fair to the American business people who are in direct competition with them, who have to live by all the rules, to have these folks in essence living by so few of them.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Taylor, I will personally call Admiral Loy this afternoon to have him look into some of the cruise vessels or all the cruise vessels that are coming into Port in New Orleans to make sure that they comply with the Clean Water Act.
Mr. TAYLOR. Well, sir, I didn't mention Clean Water Act, and if I did, I stand corrected, but certainly, the wage laws, the OSHA laws, Americans with Disabilities Act, and again, it is not just New Orleans. When they pull in to the Port of Gulfport, they are competing with folks right across the dock who are living by all the rules. When they pull into Los Angeles, they are competing with folks right across the dock who are living by all the rules. All I am saying is let us be fair, and above all let us be fair to our folks and quit giving all the advantages to somebody else.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. We are joined this morning by Admiral North and the Honorable Jim Hall. We thank you for coming, gentlemen, to give testimony this morning, and we will begin with Admiral North.
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TESTIMONY OF REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT C. NORTH, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT FOR MARINE SAFETY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, U.S. COAST GUARD; AND THE HON. JIM HALL, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, ACCOMPANIED BY MARGORIE MURTAGH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MARINE SAFETY
Admiral NORTH. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and distinguished Subcommittee members. I am Rear Admiral Robert C. North, Assistant Commandant for Marine Safety and Environmental Protection. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today. I have submitted a statement for the record and have an oral summary for the Subcommittee this morning.
As Assistant Commandant for Marine Safety and Environmental Protection, I am responsible for Coast Guard programs that include commercial vessel safety, marine environmental protection and waterways management. Our marine safety mission statement is to protect the public, the environment, and U.S. economic interests through the prevention and mitigation of maritime incidents, protecting people from the sea and the sea from people.
Within that mission statement, passenger vessel safety is a very high concern to us, and our business plan goals specifically address it. Our passenger vessel safety program is carried out through a regime of international and domestic safety standards that started more than a century ago. Compliance programs ensure that vessels meeting these standards can follow a continuous improvement process of incorporating new technology, lessons learned and knowledge gained from casualty investigations, practical experience and research and development projects.
Much of the history of the regulation of maritime safety has been reactive. Disasters followed by legislation, but maritime safety has transitioned from the historical reactive approach, I believe, to a more proactive, systematic, risk-based approach today. In 1995, the Coast Guard chartered a task force to conduct a safety review of the cruise line industry as a result of four foreign flag cruise ships experiencing casualties during a 2-month period. That task force concluded at that time that the cruise ship industry was safe and that current initiatives should further improve its safety record. Passenger vessels operating from U.S. ports are among the safest modes of transportation available today.
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Risk can be defined as the product of probability of an accident occurring and the consequences if it does occur. Our most complex challenge is considering the low probability but very high consequence event, such as a cruise ship incident that may put a large number of passengers at risk far at sea. Although the passenger vessel safety record is very good, we still consider our ability to prevent and if necessary respond to a major passenger vessel casualty at sea as a very high priority.
Our standards address both variables in the risk evaluation: the probability that something could go wrong and the resulting consequences should it occur. Our approach is to reduce the probability of accidents through prevention programs and continue to improve our response capability. International fire protection and stability standards decrease the likelihood that a vessel will have to be abandoned if a casualty occurs, and increase the time available if an evacuation does become necessary, but we cannot be complacent and fail to be prepared in the event that a ship must be evacuated at sea.
Coast Guard resources must be able to conduct offshore search and rescue operations reliably, which are potentially the most difficult operations we are called upon to perform. There our Deepwater recapitalization of cutters, aircraft and our command and control and communications assets, together with the National Distress and Response System Modernization Project are essential to maintaining that capability as well as our ability to conduct environmental compliance operations.
Major response exercises involving the cruise industry and cruise ships are conducted around the U.S. in partnership with the industry. These exercises not only increase the level of preparedness for the Coast Guard and the industry, but also provide an excellent vehicle to integrate Coast Guard and industry efforts into the local response community where necessary.
Standards to reduce risk are applied to vessel design, vessel construction, associated equipment, and manning of vessels. They may be international regimes developed through the International Maritime Organization, where the United States has provided leadership through the Coast Guard, or they may be domestic regulatory projects developed with full public input, or they may also be based on classification society standards.
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The principal international convention dealing with passenger vessel safety is the 1974 International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, known as SOLAS 74, which includes standards for watertight subdivision, stability, fire protection, lifesaving equipment, and navigation safety, among others. Two other major international instruments that have had the greatest impact in recent years on vessel management and crew competence are the International Safety Management Code, the so-called ISM code, and the Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, otherwise known as STCW, with the '95 amendments.
Recent accidents show that these standards work to protect the safety of passengers. In July 1998, the cruise ship ECSTASY experienced a fire which started in the laundry room and spread to the aft mooring deck. Structural fire protection, an onboard sprinkler system, and crew response helped to keep the fire localized to that mooring deck area. The incident at the same time, also revealed some areas for standards improvement related to the mooring deck fire protection itself and vessel control systems.
The Coast Guard has taken a leadership role in the international arena, where projects are currently underway to continue the improvement of standards for fire protection, watertight integrity, subdivision, stability, evacuation and human factors. The Coast Guard has in place a robust enforcement regime to ensure foreign flag passenger cruise ships comply with the U.S. and international safety and environmental standards. Our involvement begins early when a ship design is still in the concept stage, and follows with a review for strict compliance to SOLAS regulations. Our inspectors visit the vessel during construction to ensure that requirements are being met. When the vessel is completed, a team of inspectors visits the ship once more for what we call the initial control verification examination. The continuation of initial exam occurs when the vessel makes its first port call in the U.S., at which time we conduct drills, checking crew competency before issuing a certificate allowing the vessel to embark U.S. citizens or passengers from a U.S. port.
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Once the ship enters service, we inspect the vessel every three months. Every foreign flag cruise ship arriving in the United States carrying passengers is inspected every three months to continue verification. During those inspections we again focus on crew competency as required by STCW and operational procedures related to safety and pollution prevention. Over the years, international and domestic U.S. standards have been harmonized so that today we believe there is an equivalent level of safety between U.S. and foreign flag vessels operating from U.S. ports in terms of standards and compliance.
Attention has been given lately to reports of crimes committed on various cruise ships. Generally, the Coast Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigation have jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed on passenger vessels on the high seas if the vessel is U.S. flagged or the crime occurs in the U.S. territorial sea or the victim or the perpetrator is a U.S. citizen, and the vessel departed from or will arrive at a U.S. port. The current regime requires reports of unlawful acts that occur on board to be made to the Coast Guard and to the FBI. The Coast Guard and FBI are in discussions on this issue to ensure that we don't duplicate efforts, that proper interagency cooperation occurs, and that prioritization of follow-up procedures are followed.
Similar to safety, the Coast Guard's pollution prevention program is based upon a regulatory standards and compliance regime for vessel design and equipment, operation and operational practices. There are numerous pieces of legislation that go back to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 that provide the Coast Guard with necessary authority to ensure that our waterways are protected. Under these acts and the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, the Coast Guard promulgated a set of comprehensive pollution prevention regulations for ships, which include inspection and compliance programs, procedural and personnel requirements, and operational requirements.
In summary, the Coast Guard is very concerned about passenger ship safety and protection of the environment. We have been heavily involved for over a century, either the Coast Guard or our predecessor organizations, in the development of domestic and international standards. We have an aggressive enforcement program. We continue to enhance our efforts through research and development, increased use of risk methodologies to identify the most probable causes of accidents and how to mitigate the consequences, and partnerships with vessel operators to improve their posture and to plan jointly for emergencies.
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In addition to emergency response and evacuation planning, the partnerships are also looking at Y2K readiness, issues relating to infant life jackets, and English language proficiency requirements. These collective efforts with the International Council on Cruise Lines and other industry representatives have contributed to a remarkably low casualty rate for passenger ships operating out of U.S. ports, but we are not content to maintain the status quo. We are determined to improve cruise ship safety and environmental compliance even more.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity to discuss this important issue with you today, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Admiral North.
Mr. Hall.
Mr. HALL. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I am pleased to be here today representing the National Transportation Safety Board. Seated to my left is Marjorie Murtagh, who is the head of our Office of Marine Safety, who is joining me in our testimony. We are pleased to be here and on your subject, the safety of cruise ships operating from United States ports. I, like Admiral North, have an extended statement that I would like to submit for the record, and I will summarize my remarks.
Mr. GILCHREST. Without objection.
Mr. HALL. Let me begin by thanking the United States Coast Guard for permitting the National Transportation Safety Board personnel to board the cruise ship TROPICALE following a fire just 2 weeks ago. As you know, this accident happened outside of United States territorial waters and the Safety Board has no jurisdiction to board this foreign flag cruise ship.
Travel by cruise ship remains one of the most popular and safest leisure pastimes for United States citizens, and this popularity is increasing each year. However, with bigger and newer passenger ships being built, the potential for disaster is high. I would like to focus my testimony today on what the Board believes is the greatest threat to cruise ship safety, fire at sea.
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Since 1979 the Safety Board has investigated 25 major accidents involving foreign cruise ships operating from United States ports. Of those 25 accidents, 16 involve fires that resulted in 8 fatalities and 201 injuries. As a result of our investigations, the Board made a series of recommendations to improve fire safety, including sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and protected means of escape. These recommendations were finally implemented after a tragic accident in the North Sea aboard the cruise ship SCANDINAVIAN STAR, when the international community was finally convinced that the recommended changes were necessary.
Even with these safety improvements, cruise ships continue to have fire problems. Indeed, in the last 3 years the Safety Board has investigated three cruise ship accidents involving fire. Those accidents involve the UNIVERSE EXPLORER, the VISTAFJORD and the ECSTASY. Mr. Chairman, the recent fires aboard the UNIVERSE EXPLORER and the VISTAFJORD caused multiple injuries and deaths. In both accidents, the fire started early in the morning when most people were asleep in their cabins. However, neither ship was equipped with automatic smoke alarms that sound locally in the crew and passenger accommodation areas.
Mr. Chairman, fire and smoke kills and kills quickly. Immediate warning of the presence of smoke is absolutely essential to escape a fire, especially when the escape routes are through narrow passageways with no natural lighting.
The Safety Board is only asking that these floating hotels have the same warning systems, particularly local sounding smoke alarms, to alert passengers and crew that are already required of all hotels and motels throughout the United States.
The Safety Board also continues to ask for emergency call systems to be installed in all cruise ship cabins to allow trapped passengers or crew to alert those in charge of their dilemma, as well as professional firefighters and rescue teams, to assist them in an emergency.
The fire on the UNIVERSE EXPLORER also highlighted the need for greater vigilance by the owners, the flag states and the United States Coast Guard to ensure that these ships meet the fire standards already in place.
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I would like to draw your attention to this diagram slightly behind you. The Safety Board's investigation of the UNIVERSE EXPLORER revealed that during renovations a critical fire protection bulkhead had been removed. This permitted deadly smoke to travel up stairways and into corridors several decks above the fire. Following the UNIVERSE EXPLORER fire, passengers told the Board that they were not provided with information pertaining to fire emergencies by the ship's crew. As a result, we issued recommendations to the industry on that issue. Passengers on board the ECSTASY made similar comments following the July 1998 fire on that ship.
Passenger safety during a fire emergency remains a major concern for the Board, and we have recommended to the United States Coast Guard that they survey the TROPICALE's passengers so we can have a better understanding of how the ship's crew and the passengers acted during that emergency. We look forward to the results of the Coast Guard investigations into this accident.
Before closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to briefly mention an item on the Board's most wanted list of safety issues. That is the need for voyage data recorders, which has been promoted by the Safety Board since the 1970's. Voyage data recorders provide critical factual information for accident investigation. They can play a key role in identifying and addressing causal factors and could be used to better manage the vessel's operation. We understand that the International Maritime Organization may finally make these rules a reality this year. We are hopeful that we will be able to close this recommendation as acceptable in the near future.
Mr. Chairman, the Safety Board is aware of the industry's reluctance in all modes of transportation to use on board recorders, many times because of privacy issues. The Board's reauthorization request this year includes a section regarding withholding of voice and video recorder information for all modes of transportation from public disclosure, comparable to the protections provided for cockpit voice recorders. With passage of this legislation, we believe the privacy concerns raised with the Board will diminish.
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That completes my testimony, Mr. Chairman, and Ms. Murtagh and I will be glad to respond to any questions the panel may have.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Hall. Mr. Hall, you mentioned that these floating hotels should comply with the same safety standards as hotels in the United States. Can you be specific, and I understand about 82 percent of your safety recommendations have been implemented.
Mr. HALL. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. Can you go over some of the ones that you feel are vitally important that you recommended that have not been implemented and how they would compare to what is on a cruise ship and what is in a hotel.
Mr. HALL. Surely. And I will ask Ms. Murtagh to respond in more detail, but specifically, the local sounding alarm in the room is the main thing that was referred to in the testimony.
Mr. GILCHREST. Are you talking about smoke alarm or an alarm that would wake up passengers if there is a fire in the engine room or something like that?
Mr. HALL. Smoke alarm that will alarm and wake them up.
Mr. GILCHREST. That is not mandatory for a cruise ship right now?
Ms. MURTAGH. Sir, if I might elaborate a little bit, the smoke detectors are required by international convention. However, they are not required to locally sound. What will happen is the sound will take place on the bridge of the ship and then the officer on the bridge can silence the alarm on the bridge, send somebody down to see if there is smoke, where it has traveled to and then come back and make recommendations to the bridge to close doors, things like that.
Mr. GILCHREST. So international agreement requires, recommends that each cabin have a smoke detector?
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Ms. MURTAGH. That's correct, sir.
Mr. GILCHREST. But not alarm in the cabin?
Ms. MURTAGH. Correct.
Mr. GILCHREST. I see. Are there any others?
Ms. MURTAGH. Again, the automatic operation of doors that would be activated by a smoke detector, so that it would restrict the smoke to the area in which the fire immediately starts. For example, in the case of the UNIVERSE EXPLORER, if the doors had been on local smoke detectors, the doors could have closed and contained the fire and smoke within the laundry. Instead, the doors remained open, and that smoke traveled three decks and down corridors and five crew people lost their lives.
Mr. GILCHREST. I see. Voyage data recorder, what is the status of that right now in the international community with the United States as far as cruise ships are concerned? It is a recommendation on your part?
Mr. HALL. Well, I might defer to Admiral North on this. It is a recommendation the Board has made for some time. We are very pleased. The United States Coast Guard of course is the authorized representative of the United States Government at the International Maritime Organization. We appreciate very much that the Coast Guard permitted us to have a representative participate with them in the session that is presently ongoing, and Admiral North, do you want to go through—.
Mr. GILCHREST. Hold the details. I am going to ask Admiral North the same things I just asked you, if I have enough time. We have a vote. Voyage data recorder, am I correct to understand that that would be placed on board ship somewhere in the bridge and would be very similar, if not the same, as a voice data recorder on an airplane?
Mr. HALL. That is correct. It is very similar to the black box. It started in aviation. We see now in the marine area and just recently this past week the Freight Liner Corporation announced that every one of their large 18-wheel trucks will be equipped with a similar recorder starting with the manufacturer next year. So this has been something the Board has been very interested in, Mr. Chairman, because we believe that this tool has been probably one of the most effective tools in ensuring safety in the skies. We think it can perform the same function on the oceans and on the surface of the United States.
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Mr. GILCHREST. I see. Thank you. We have a vote. I will just ask Admiral North if he can respond to the smoke detectors on the doors and the voice data recorder. Then I think we may recess and then come back after the vote. Admiral North.
Admiral NORTH. The smoke alarm issue, the alarms in the passenger space is the result of a paper that we submitted to IMO, and the next Fire Protection Subcommittee is going to consider that issue, as well as a number of other potential amendments to SOLAS that deal with fire protection issues. I am not certain whether the auto operation of doors by smoke detector is part of that or not, but I will take a look. I believe it is but I am not certain.
[The information follows.]
The issue of automatic operation of fire doors by smoke detection was included in the United States' position paper submitted to the 43rd Session of the Fire Protection Subcommittee, held January 11-15, 1999. It was then forwarded to the Marine Safety Committee held May 19-28, 1999 for consideration. The Marine Safety Committee concurred with it and it should be included on the agenda of the 44th Session of the Fire Protection Subcommittee, scheduled for February 21-25, 2000.
In terms of the voyage data recorder, the Navigation Subcommittee which met with IMO in London just recently is going to forward to the Maritime Safety Committee of IMO, which meets in May, the recommendation to modify SOLAS to include the voyage data recorder requirement. The current approach is looking toward the year 2002 for mandatory installation in passenger vessels. Those dates are subject to some discussion with SOLAS or, rather, the Maritime Safety Committee for finalization, but the effort is moving forward, and we also were very pleased that the Navigation Subcommittee did make that recommendation and create a proposed modification to the convention.
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Mr. GILCHREST. I see. So NTSB and the Coast Guard as far as these further recommendations for safety via SOLAS are pretty much compatible, I would guess.
Admiral NORTH. We have taken their recommendations and forwarded them on, and at least the latter case, it is becoming a reality. In the former case it is to be debated yet in the Fire Protection Subcommittee, but we are hopeful that will also move forward.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much. Due to the vote we will recess for—I guess there is just one vote—we will recess for about 15 minutes. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. GILCHREST. The hearing will come to order. We thank you for your indulgence, and we will yield now to Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to pursue the line of questioning you started. I believe the discussion was initiated by Mr. Hall's testimony about the local sounding alarms, and first, let me just go back to another point just so I can kind of get to my concern here.
Now as I understand it, Admiral, both the Bahamanian flagged cruise ship that ran into a Panamanian flagged container ship in the English Channel in usual conditions were both equipped with collision avoidance radar; is that correct?
Admiral NORTH. Best of my knowledge, yes, sir. I expect so.
Mr. DEFAZIO. You don't know the specifics of this, you are not an investigative authority, but how could one ignore collision avoidance radar? Does it sound audibly?
Admiral NORTH. It does. It gives you an audible signal depending on what parameters you have cranked into the radar to give you an alarm.
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Mr. DEFAZIO. Can you shut off the—because we just heard about them shutting off on the bridge the audible fire alarm after it sounds—can you shut off the audio?
Admiral NORTH. Well, one can probably fiddle with any piece of electronic gear.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Again, I only know the aviation industry, but I mean there are ways of disabling. You are given the capability of disabling these things.
Admiral NORTH. If I could make a comment on this, you are talking about the NORWEGIAN DREAM and the EVER DECENT collision. It is a very interesting case because it involved two vessels in a traffic separation scheme which ultimately had to come together because of a crossing situation that is created in that process. That, as you point out, probably had collision avoidance radar. One ship, the container ship, had a North Sea pilot aboard as well. So there was an extra person on the bridge in addition to whatever watchstanders were there from the ship.
So it is a very interesting investigation in terms of implementing technology, as you are pointing out, and taking technology and creating safe operations out of it, and the real link in that implementation aspect of taking technology like collision avoidance radar and systems such as traffic separation schemes and using the human element make those things happen the right way. So it probably in the long run may boil down to a very interesting examination of the human element, I am speculating there, but certainly that is a factor, and when you look at kind of the broad scenario under which the casualty occurred, there are a lot of factors in there that one has to take together, including perhaps the collision avoidance system and other factors like the North Sea pilot, which is a practice but not a requirement in looking at what happened.
Mr. DEFAZIO. The human element issue, given the fact that Mr. Hall appeared before my other committee, Aviation, and then we had a lengthy hearing about pilot fatigue, that is an issue. I would much rather take a cruise ship home in terms of my concerns than having to fly home, but I don't have that option, but that may be an element here too.
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So given that, Mr. Hall, I would like to go to the concern you raised, which is the locally sounding alarm, and I am a bit puzzled here because I stay in hotels a fair amount, and they are all required to have smoke alarms, smoke detectors in the rooms, and I ask for nonsmoking rooms, but they don't always exist. I don't always get them. I have been in rooms that smell like the local tavern, you know. So I assume people are smoking in those rooms. I don't know where else that stench came from, and yet apparently they can have an alarm in the room and it is not a problem. The rooms that I rent are all equipped with showers and I use them so that the steam doesn't seem to be a problem. Why then is there a particular problem with placing a remote sounding alarm and a grave concern over false alarms on cruise ships?
Mr. HALL. Mr. Congressman, I am sorry, I have no idea. Now, when I inquired, and I have visited IMO and visited some of the classification societies, the only response I received was that, you know, they were concerned about, you know, false alarms and unduly, you know, alarming or causing situations that would be difficult to control. I don't really accept that as an acceptable answer, and I certainly hope that we will do something that we can continue to move forward and will be accepted by the industry.
But you know, the Chairman mentioned there are a number of things that are still outstanding that the board has recommended. The emergency call buttons for passengers right now, the industry feels that with five or 6,000 people they can still rely on individual telephones in the room for emergency situations. We are concerned that in those situations, the telephone systems gets swamped and there is no real appropriate response. We have asked for on basically these ships that are, you know, small towns and cities to have specially trained rescue teams for people who are trapped because many times because of the construction of the ship, if there is an emergency, there will be a need for special equipment and special training to rescue the individuals in need.
We have requested reliable internal radio communication anywhere inside the vessel. We have asked for the crew—many times in these ships, the crews are put, you know, in very remote areas on the ships. They are the least attractive places for the individuals to be, and we have asked for periodic drillings and instructions to locate alternate routes for the crews because many times they are deep in the bowels of the ship.
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We have asked for the medical staff to be part of an integrated response team and equipped with portable radios and for better instructions at the muster station and improved fire drill procedures and placards in the staterooms, and I think all of these are things that I would hope the industry would accept because it would reflect a good safety culture in the international cruise ship community. They have a tremendous responsibility for thousands of our citizens, and they need to be vigilant in this area, and as you know, Congressman, usually those organizations that are open and responsive with information are those that have a good safety culture, and these are some of the things that the Board has recommended and are hoping that the Coast Guard will continue to pursue in the international arena.
Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Admiral, if you could start with the smoke, the individual smoke alarms, do you have concerns about them or are you fully advocating them to the IMO and then maybe briefly address those concerns and then I am sure I will be out of time.
Admiral NORTH. We have expressed some concerns in the past over false alarms created by, in some cases, hair spray or steam or smoke that is not a fire, smoke from tobacco or whatever. We, however, have taken this before IMO and believe it needs to be debated at IMO.
Mr. DEFAZIO. If I could just interrupt, you are kind of a diplomat and I am not. Let me understand the position of the Coast Guard and the U.S. here, that is, you had some concerns about these devices but you have sort of overcome those concerns and we have asked that this issue be taken up by the IMO. Is that what you are saying?
Admiral NORTH. We have asked the issue be taken up by the IMO and the issue discussed and maybe a broader input be given to those concerns, see what the experience of other flag and port state administrations might have been, and then debate the issue of fire protection.
Mr. DEFAZIO. And there is a concern, which I think is a legitimate concern about inland waterway ships in the U.S. and their compliance with safety laws which is not necessarily the major subject here today but something that concerns me very much. Is there an individual smoke alarm requirement on those because they are subject to our laws?
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Admiral NORTH. There are only a few overnight passenger vessels in the U.S. that are regulated under rules similar to large passenger vessel rules that govern foreign flag passenger vessels under SOLAS. One of those is the DELTA QUEEN which is, as you know, a rather old vessel that has multitudes of detection gear aboard because of the exemption for its lack of structural fire protection in the superstructure.
Mr. DEFAZIO. I guess, my question would be given that, and I understand that is a problem with that ship, if they do have those individual detection devices, then we certainly have a real case example of whether or not there is a problem.
Admiral NORTH. There is a lot of detection. There is no individual alarm.
Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, all right. And then the other just briefly, and I thank the chairman for his indulgence, the emergency call buttons, the trained response teams, have we stated a position on those?
Admiral NORTH. Those are part of our paper as we go forward in the next Fire Protection Subcommittee.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Admiral. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio.
Gentleman from Alaska.
Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have any questions at this time.
Mr. GILCHREST. Gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Admiral North, in your testimony you were talking about the Coast Guard's plan for deploying capability. Obviously you are putting the business plan for that together as far as what your ships need, and knowing how organized the Coast Guard is, I am sure you have already done a pie chart as to how much of your time for those deep water vessels is going to be devoted towards cruise ship safety or being able to respond to that, what percentage of your time when you are putting together that business plan to justify the needy ships.
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Admiral NORTH. I am a little bit out of my element here because I am not the owner of the deep water cutters, but I would tell you that their involvement in search and rescue thankfully has been very small. We would anticipate that that would be an important, obviously when it happens, but not a frequent use of those vessels, and obviously they are not designed solely for that purpose.
Mr. TAYLOR. But you obviously thought it was important enough to include it in your testimony.
Admiral NORTH. Yes.
Mr. TAYLOR. So it is a part of your thinking and the Coast Guard's thinking as to the need for the deep water vessels.
Admiral NORTH. Our ability to conduct, command, and control out on scene when one of those accidents occurs, yes.
Mr. TAYLOR. So, again, it is a cost that is going to be incurred to the people of this Nation.
Admiral NORTH. An incremental cost.
Mr. TAYLOR. For an industry that contributes almost nothing towards the Treasury of this Nation.
Admiral NORTH. Incremental cost to protect Americans.
Mr. TAYLOR. Admiral, I am curious, and it really caught my attention. I happen to have gone to Mardi Gras for the first time in a couple of decades last year and saw the foreign cruise ships tied up at the River Walk section of the New Orleans waterfront, and as you mentioned, they were in direct competition not only with the hotels right across the street, the restaurants right across the street, but people like the DELTA QUEEN and the sister ships to the DELTA QUEEN, the newer versions that have to live by all the rules of being an American. How long can those vessels stay tied up, because it is my understanding that the same thing happened when the Super Bowl came to the town, when the Sugar Bowl was in town. How long can those vessels remain tied up there while still being a foreign vessel?
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And the next point I wanted to make is I would like to remind the people here that at that spot, that is precisely where the Chinese Ocean Shipping Company vessel BRIGHT FIELD rammed the River Walk, and had that happened while there were several thousand people on board this vessel in the middle of the night, you would have had a catastrophe because it doesn't matter if you are 50 feet from shore or 50 miles from shore. As all the Coast Guard statistics show us, any life saving course statistics will show you, almost all of the fatalities occur right next to shore, people panicking right next to shore. So how long can a vessel get away with that?
Admiral NORTH. At some point a vessel becomes what we like to refer to as a permanently moored structure, and then it goes outside of our rules, so to speak, except for a risk assessment of its location. I don't envision they would stay that long. There is no specific time limit that says if you have passengers embarked you have only 10 days that you can stay at a berth that I am aware of.
Mr. TAYLOR. Can you get back to me on that?
Admiral NORTH. Yes sir.
[The information follows:]
The Coast Guard legal staff researched both domestic and international law concerning this question and did not find a restriction on how long a foreign flagged vessel may remain in a U.S. port. In addition, no law was found that would allow the U.S. to strip a vessel of its flag if it remained in a U.S. port over an extended period.
There are specific instances when a vessel loses its flag (nationally) under international law, but these instances are special situations such as drug trafficking, piracy, flying two flags, etc. if a vessel becomes 'stateless', then any state may exercise jurisdiction over the vessel.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Because I just don't think it is fair to the folks on the other side of the levy, and I don't think it is fair to the American flag vessels that are tied up right next to them because you have a double standard. One guy is literally paying slave wages, does not have to live by the OSHA laws, does not have to live with American with Disabilities Act, et cetera, et cetera.
How often are foreign cruise ships required to be hauled completely out of the water so you can do a below the water line inspection?
Admiral NORTH. That depends on the classification. I would say generally every 5 years or maybe twice in 5 years, depending on the class society and the flag administration.
Mr. TAYLOR. Let me contrast that with a passenger ferry, auto ferry that is crossing the Mississippi River every day. How often does it have to be hauled?
Admiral NORTH. On a biennial basis, every 2 years.
Mr. TAYLOR. Every 2 years. So you are letting these ships that carry, in some instances, thousands of people go 5 years without checking the ship below the water line, and yet for vessels that again have to live by the rules here in America it is every 2 years.
Admiral NORTH. It depends on the class of vessel.
Mr. TAYLOR. Passengers for hire.
Admiral NORTH. It varies depending on a large or a small passenger vessel.
Mr. TAYLOR. Let us talk apples and apples. The larger vessels carrying more than 50 passengers, how often, sir?
Admiral NORTH. It depends on its tonnage. If it is a large vessel by our subchapter H rules, it is at least every 2 years.
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Mr. TAYLOR. I am curious, in your testimony—I guess I am going back to Mr. Hall's testimony—you mentioned that there were 5.4 million vacationers getting on board cruise ships last year. Now, I have only done this once, but I have got to tell you a very casual observation of my time on the ship was that there were a very large percentage of senior citizens on board, unlike when I get on the airplane every week to come to Washington where you have a mix of kids literally going to college, business people going to work, senior citizens going to visit their grandkids, et cetera, et cetera, where you have a pretty good mix. I noticed a crowd that tended to be, I am going to guess, 80 percent over the age of 65. In your opinion, is that accurate for all of the cruise ship industry? Is it demographically geared towards senior citizens? And secondly, does that not in itself present some special circumstances that require special consideration as far as everything from getting the passengers on deck in the event of a catastrophe, getting the passengers on the lifeboats in the event of a catastrophe, and is anybody taking the time to look into this?
Mr. HALL. Well, Congressman, I would certainly, you know, your observations in regard to safety needs of senior citizens in emergency situations is something obviously that does require more attention in many cases. I do not know, however, the percentage or—there is going to be a witness from the international cruise ship community. Their representative is here. They may have those numbers for you. I do not have them. I will see if I can research for them and provide them for the record.
Mr. TAYLOR. Admiral, can you comment on that because, again, the Coast Guard at times I feel overly compensates for safety's sake, but I do think this is a very valid concern based on my observations of folks coming and going from cruise ships and the obvious fact that a person in their later years is not going to be capable of climbing the ladder the way an 18-year-old could or sliding down a rope the way a 17-year-old could, and are you looking into that, and are we doing all that is necessary to respond to that need?
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Admiral NORTH. I will say on the foreign flag or the deep draft cruise ship side I would say an embarkation generally is into a boat from the boat deck. There is some examination at this point of, say, when you are looking at newer construction of almost fully enclosing the lifeboat into the ship so that there is no great distance that one can see as you get into the boat and realize you are going to be lowered away, that you get in the boat and you are not cognizant or less cognizant of the height above the water. That is a question of being helped over the rail, I suppose you could say, into the boat at the boat deck.
Mr. TAYLOR. I mean, wouldn't it be, just from the top of both of our heads, safe to say that the vast majority of passengers are not going to be living on the boat deck. They are either going to be above it or below it, if they are restricted mobility. Chances are you are going to be losing your power. Are special considerations taken to see to it that the elevators retain power to the very last moment? Is special consideration taken to having crew members at the stairwells and the gangways to get people to and from the boat deck? I see these as very real problems, and my question to the Coast Guard is, does anyone take the time to test a crew to see to it they can respond to this, because from what we are getting from these last couple of disasters is the crew were the first ones to turn Chicken Little, and I am not so sure that they would be there to take care of the passengers.
Admiral NORTH. When we do our quarterly examinations, and boat fire and boat drills, part of the process is to question the crew as to how they go about their duties and assist passengers in the process, and if we grow uncomfortable with the ability of that to be done, then we can detain the ship until we are satisfied that they have an approach that will be able to deal with passengers and get them up to the boat deck, or otherwise help passengers in an emergency.
Mr. TAYLOR. In the last two incidents regarding a fire on a passenger vessel at sea, there were reports of the crew members that were unable to communicate with the passengers. They were from someplace else. They did not speak English, even basic English, up, down, left, right. What is being done to address that, because, again, that is clearly a safety consideration. First thing they say when I get on that flight is that flight attendant is not here for any purpose other than your safety.
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Admiral NORTH. Well, what is being done to address that is a couple of things. One, as Mr. Hall mentioned, 300 passengers from the TROPICALE are being interviewed to see exactly what their problems were and if they had problems in that area of follow up, and then, again, as we do our quarterly and our annual control verification examinations, we look to see if the people and the crew that are tasked with assisting the passengers are conversant in English and agree that they can assist the passengers and direct them to the right location.
Officer, ratings, part of the navigation or engineering watch, although not generally involved with the passengers, are required to have an English-speaking capability.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Taylor, we are going to come around for a second round of questioning.
Mr. Young.
Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, thanks for having this hearing. I, for one, because of my state and the involvement of the cruise industry, am quite interested in the hearing. I can say from the outset that with the rapid growth we have had in our state, which is, I believe, the second largest market now of all the markets of cruise ships, they have done an excellent job of safety. We had the Prisendam, I believe it was, was the one that had a large passenger group, no lives were lost to my knowledge on that vessel. There may have been one following that. It was the heart attack.
The recent accidents we have had in Alaska really were not the larger cruise lines. They were the smaller cruise lines, and quite frankly, it was because of the fault of the pilot and not the lines itself. The pilot apparently had other things on her mind unfortunately, and there was no accidents there either, no deaths there either, which brings me to the point. Mr. Hall, primarily, it is my understanding it was 24 accidents in the last eleven years—excuse me, had been 24 accidents in the last 20 years and there was 11 deaths. Were those deaths passengers or crew members? Do you have the statistics on that?
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Mr. HALL. There was one passenger and the balance were crew members.
Mr. YOUNG. So out of the 20 years, 24 accidents, we have had lost actually one passenger. How does that compare with other forms of transportation, and especially in the recreational field, primarily aircraft, et cetera?
Mr. HALL. Well, of course, it is a better record in terms of just on the sole basis of fatalities than we have in some of the other modes of transportation, Congressman.
Mr. YOUNG. On another line, with this rapid growth, a lot of the older ships have been put to rest or they have gone to a smaller market. The newer ships have met some of the, I believe, recommendations, Mr. Hall, you have recommended. How much has that been met as far as the recommendations for safety requirements on these bigger, newer ships?
Mr. HALL. Let me have Ms. Murtagh respond on that. Quite a few items are outlined in the testimony.
Ms. MURTAGH. Yes, sir.
Mr. YOUNG. I apologize that I was late, but I do apologize for that.
Ms. MURTAGH. There are a number of things that the Safety Board has recommended over the years, including sprinkler systems. They were not only installed on new ships but they were retroactively installed on the majority of cruise ships. As you point out, there are some older ones that still don't have sprinkler systems. The particular ship that we dealt with was the UNIVERSE EXPLORER. That company has now agreed to retroactively install sprinkler systems. The smoke detectors are results of recommendations made by the Safety Board. Protection of means of escape, location lighting, there are a number.
Mr. HALL. Just to go through the ones in the testimony, Congressman, I apologize, my memory doesn't serve me as well as it could in remembering all these things, but sprinkler systems, smoke detectors, protected means of escape, remote operation of fire doors, centrally located control systems for all fire detection alarm and fire protection equipment, fire suppression systems and exhaust ducts from galley ranges, low level emergency lighting, effective public address systems, hose ports and fire doors, and improved crew language communication ability. All of those were recommendations that the Board had made at previous accident investigations that had gone to the Coast Guard and through the process been advanced into the international community and are now part of the SOLAS activities.
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Mr. YOUNG. I go back to my comment before. Out of all these accidents yet with these new recommendations we have lost one passenger life.
Mr. HALL. That is correct, Congressman, but as you know and are very well aware of, vigilance is the most important area in safety, and as I mentioned in my testimony, we see now ships that are five, 6,000 passengers, they are even planning for larger ships, essentially larger than the small community in Tennessee I live in, and our concern is to be sure not only that all of the necessary resources are there for an emergency, that there is good planning in place. And as Congressman Taylor mentioned, you know, there is a change in the demographics in our society, and that is something we might ought to be looking at in terms of these activities because there are lots of stairs, heavy doors, things—that was part of our recommendation in the UNIVERSE EXPLORER, that there be more detailed instruction at the muster stations so that when people come on the ships, similar to when you come on an airline, that you are sure that the emergency information is in your—but your point on the safety record is correct.
Mr. YOUNG. What I am trying to get across is, the newer ships are better equipped than the older ships.
Mr. HALL. Yes, sir.
Mr. YOUNG. The other thing that I hope people would recognize that the demographics may be older, but that is not necessarily true. I have a wife that loves to go on cruises, and one of our biggest complaints, if I have any, about the more recent cruises is the abundance of young children running up and down the stairwells, and you know, because it is sort of a capsulized baby sitting arena is what it boils down to. I would not take a child on a vessel. I would worry about him falling overboard, but the truth of the matter is that there are a tremendous amount of passengers now who are young people and young people with children on board that vessel. So you have the demographics of the senior citizens, the mature citizens, and you have the child. So that ship is going to have a lot of complexities as far as making it totally safe for both age groups, and I believe training comes into effect here, but here is something I want you all to remember.
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One of the things I noticed, the biggest problem of safety on passenger cruise ships is it is not the crew, it is not the captain, it is not the maintenance, it is not the engineer. It is the passenger. The thing they complain about is having to go through a drill. I mean, I don't know how you get people to understand that this is a serious thing. It doesn't dawn on them that they better know where the station is, they better know where the lifeboat is supposed to be, they better know the stairwell they have to go down, they better know the elevator and, if you happen to be handicapped, which areas can be more accessible, and most of the cruise ships are good about putting people close to the lifeboats.
But the biggest complaint I have ever heard, and I never could understand is, from the passengers themselves. They don't want to go through that. They hate to put that life jacket over their hairdo, believe me, and I don't know how you do that. I don't know—it is like you are talking about airplanes or planes. I was on a plane one time that lost its oxygen. It really didn't lose its oxygen, but all the masks came down. Half of the passengers on that plane were going like this trying to reach the mask. They didn't even pull it down, and I don't know how many people hear this over and over again, so I don't know the challenge of the cruise ship industry.
I do know this. They have done a great job in my State as far as safety. As you know, I have got some concerns otherwise and they have taken care of that, pretty stiff fine on environmental dumping. I don't know if that will ever happen again. It happened to be one ship. I don't think that captain will probably be working in America waters again, but the safety part of it, to me, I think has been a great step forward.
Our job now with the Coast Guard and you is to make sure as these new ships come on line that they consider the demographics of those people who are going to be on the vessel itself. It is great industry. I mean, it employs a tremendous amount of people in my state during the summer. I would like to have them do it in the winter, but people don't like to sail in icebergs. So that won't happen.
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Thank you, Mr. Hall. I don't have any more questions.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Young.
Mr. Baird.
Mr. BAIRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to follow up on the line of remarks by Mr. Young and by Mr. Taylor. I have sort of intuitively asked myself how do cruise ships differ from airlines, et cetera, and it is my understanding that airlines conduct real live evacuation drills with, you know, fully loaded plane, certain time limit, environmental factors to simulate an accident. To what extent have we actually taken a cruise ship, filled it with passengers of the demographic characteristics that we would expect in the age concerns Mr. Taylor alluded to earlier, put a crew of non-English speaking or to similar proportions that we might expect, and actually conducted a real drill to see an evacuation and how it works?
Mr. HALL. Let me clarify, Congressman. Airlines usually have that obligation one time during certification, the manufacturer does. The airline companies normally do not do that. I am not aware. I would defer to Admiral North whether he is aware of any requirement in that area.
Mr. DEFAZIO. If the gentleman would yield for a second, just to further clarify, I have long had concerns about this. These are conducted by airline employees who have trained and drilled. They are not—and I have asked to go and somehow they manage to recertify planes, very different planes, without having to go through those reviews again. I have enduring concerns about the FAA in those areas, and those drills are not accurate.
Admiral NORTH. Within the last year we had a passenger evacuation drill in the Tampa area that involved passengers.
Mr. BAIRD. How many passengers?
Admiral NORTH. I don't know the details in terms of numbers.
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Mr. BAIRD. The reason I ask is you have got literally hundreds of people. I think Mr. Taylor's point is well taken, because I am a big fan of the cruise ship industry. I think it is economically a great way to go. I think people have great experiences, but I do have this concern about safety, and too often we retroactively look back and say what went wrong. It seems to me that a common sense question looking back would be, did anybody ever actually fill one of these things with passengers, see how long it takes a 70-year-old person with a bad hip to get up four flights of stairs when the elevator is jammed with folks, and it just seems to me that is the kind of question we could ask in retrospect, and it doesn't sound like it has been done. It doesn't sound like we have done it to an adequate degree, and I would again echo Mr. Taylor's concern about linguistic problems if people are panicked.
I noted in one of your testimonies it talks about the couple with resulting difficulty in breathing, smoke causes panic to set in at the very time when one needs clear thinking the most, and when you have people who are not well trained themselves perhaps as crew and with language difficulties, we have got a problem.
Admiral NORTH. May I comment on that a little?
Mr. BAIRD. Please.
Admiral NORTH. I would say that although drills as passengers in the domestic industry is probably more prevalent than those vessels that carry more passengers or in the international industry, but I would say that if you look at, I can think of some instances because of the casualty vessels had to be evacuated where that was done very successfully.
The one vessel requiring a full-scale evacuation that comes to mind is the PRINSENDAM off the coast of Alaska back in the eighties, which I mentioned in my statement, and there have been some recent casualties, not near the U.S. coast, where evacuations have occurred fundamentally very successfully without injury to the passenger. I might add that if you are going to do a drill to evacuate passengers from a ship, one can do that alongside the berth with, I will say, low risk to the passenger, but if you try to do it at sea, you are now getting into a much different area in terms of putting people into boats and dropping them over the side, and even professional mariners at times trying to evacuate a ship in distress have difficulty.
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So hence, all the regime of standards to try to ensure that if we have to evacuate we do, but that becomes I guess the last resort by definition, but that decision has to be made at some point obviously in a timely fashion but it is not one that you make lightly. I have been involved in investigations of casualties where the master had the passengers put into the boats, and they sat there at the boat deck while the issue was being resolved, and they were ready to go if he had to do that. Fortunately, in this particular case they didn't have to evacuate.
So we can do that to a great degree. Exercises are very helpful. Getting passengers involved is a very useful thing to really see what they can do, but depending on the circumstances, can pose a high risk to the passengers as well. So you have got to balance.
Mr. BAIRD. I think it just would be useful to get some baseline data on how fast a 70-year-old can go up how many flights of stairs and those kinds of things when we are designing these.
One final question, you may be aware—I am sure you are, Admiral North—in the Puget Sound we have the International Cargo Opportunity System which tracks vessels. Given that some of these cruise lines may have traveled in places that are not heavily trafficked at all times, do we have an international tracking system wherein we can monitor what vessels are proximal to others should there be the need for a quick response?
Admiral NORTH. A number of things that kind of work in that area. First is AMVER, the Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System, which we manage. That gives us the position of vessels that are willing to participate on a voluntary basis to go to the aid of other vessels. In fact, in the case of the TROPICALE, when we were looking at the potential for that vessel to evacuate, there were two vessels standing by, one assist vessel from the same company as well as a Navy ship, and we were doing an AMVER query to see who else was in the area or nearby who could have been asked to assist, and then we would have moved ahead with the coordination effort at that point, as well as dispatching some of our aircraft and vessels out there.
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We are also involved in the IMO at this point. In fact, the same Navigation Subcommittee that agreed to move ahead with voyage data recorders also agreed to move ahead with an international requirement of what we call transponders, which is a global positioning device that transmits the vessel's location. Now that can be ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore and the range may be somewhat limited, and it is generally used as a traffic management device in close waters. However, the potential exists that you can use a transponder to find a vessel from an aircraft or some other way, and all these vessels are equipped with emergency position-indicating radio beacons, which currently or as they transition from the old to the new EPIRBs as we call them, transmit to a satellite which if they are registered properly tells us what vessel, and then the signal will tell us where it is and we know a whole rundown of information that we can use then to dispatch assistance.
So there are things in, EPIRB currently and AIS is another kind of add-on to that, but the EPIRB is the present device and I would say having been used very, very successfully. One of our concerns is sometimes false EPIRB signals, but we are happy to go out and look and go back if it turns out to not be a case.
Mr. BAIRD. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Baird. I have a couple more questions, and we can go around again, if anybody else has any other questions. I have a parochial question, Admiral North. C and D Canal, Delaware River to the Chesapeake Bay, a cruise ship is in the C and D Canal. It is a Corps of Engineers canal. Who has jurisdiction of that cruise ship while it is in the canal, the Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, State Department of Natural Resources?
Admiral NORTH. Well, it depends on what perspective you are talking about, I guess. The Corps of Engineers has specific regulations that govern the use of the canal from a navigation perspective. So they are interested and responsible for how the vessel moves through the canal. If it spills oil in the canal then we would be responsible for that and the State would be interested, of course, as well.
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Mr. GILCHREST. But then I guess if the cruise ship for any reason lost power in the canal, then the Coast Guard would respond to that?
Admiral NORTH. It would, but it wouldn't go very far or very deep because of the width of the canal. It would probably be sitting pretty much where it was against the bank.
Mr. GILCHREST. Could you comment on the problem with the ECSTASY and whether, Admiral North, Mr. Hall, whether the crew followed proper protocol, they were orderly and they functioned with what you would consider reasonable, and is there any sense of yet—I know it is under investigation—same situation with the TROPICALE did the crew respond in a professional manner Admiral North?
Admiral NORTH. I would say from a couple of perspectives. One, the crew was able to do its part, I will say, to deal with the fire. There was concern I think over—.
Mr. GILCHREST. Is this with the ECSTASY?
Admiral NORTH. Yes.
—concern over information given to the passengers as to what the state of emergency was or level of emergency and how that was done. Because of their proximity to Miami it is anecdotally said I think by a number of passengers and what I saw on the news say, gosh, I saw it on the TV in the stateroom before I heard about it on the ship. Certainly, that is a concern. So I think in the follow up to the ECSTASY we need to look at that, and in the TROPICALE case, as was pointed out earlier, 300 passengers, thereabout, are going to be interviewed to determine their perspective exactly what happened.
Mr. GILCHREST. When you say follow up, what does that mean? Talk to the crews?
Admiral NORTH. From both our investigation of the TROPICALE, along with NTSB's investigation with which we participated, and see what the reports tell us about the level of concern that the two teams of investigators found relative to that issue.
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Mr. GILCHREST. Relative to the issue of the ECSTASY, the follow up to that would be? I mean, if it was found that the crew did not respond in the manner in which you would expect them to respond under the circumstances, would the Coast Guard follow up?
Admiral NORTH. It becomes an issue for a next quarterly, or I would say before then, examination once that information is developed and we are satisfied we understand the scope of it. Then we need to go back to the ship when the ship is available and deal with that issue with the ship's personnel and with the company.
Mr. GILCHREST. Could that mean that the ship would not be allowed to pick up U.S. passengers if they didn't comply?
Admiral NORTH. If we felt there were concerns in that area, we go back and do, a very thorough look at the level of the ability of the crew to deal with the passengers as we think they should and we don't find that, then, yes, they could be detained until we are satisfied that that is the case.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Hall.
Mr. HALL. Yes, Mr. Chairman. As you mentioned, we currently have an ongoing investigation into the ECSTASY tragedy and the adequacy—one of things that the investigators are looking at is the adequacy of the passenger safety during and after the fire, including specifically the emergency and contingency planning and actions by vessel operators and local, state and Federal response agencies, the procedures followed by the ECSTASY crew to ensure passenger safety during the emergency. One of the things that we are continuing to pursue and is, there seem to be during the interviews that we did, some difficulty with the passengers in being able to identify who the crew were and who the appropriate emergency response personnel were aboard the ship.
Mr. GILCHREST. The crew didn't have uniforms?
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Mr. HALL. Well, Ms. Murtagh, since it is an active investigation, I am going to let—.
Mr. GILCHREST. Are we talking about the ECSTASY now or the TROPICALE?
Mr. HALL. The ECSTASY.
Ms. MURTAGH. Yes, sir. The ECSTASY is still under investigation and the passengers could identify the crew, but in order to be able to talk to somebody who knew what to do in an emergency, there were crew members, for example, who would be wearing crew uniforms but they could only tell them where soap and towels were. They could not necessarily tell them what to do in an emergency. Therefore, we had discussions with Carnival Cruise Lines to see if there would be some way that emergency personnel could be more readily identifiable to the passengers so they would know who to ask those questions of.
Mr. GILCHREST. Is this an ongoing joint investigation with the NTSB and the Coast Guard or is this just NTSB?
Ms. MURTAGH. It is an NTSB led investigation, sir. It is with the Coast Guard as a party to our investigation.
Mr. GILCHREST. So you would agree with Admiral North, that if they don't meet the level of standard of professionalism so that the U.S. passengers, all passengers, are safe under those circumstances, that this ship might not be allowed to dock or come to U.S. ports?
Ms. MURTAGH. The Coast Guard has the authority to prevent that ship from departing the U.S. port if in fact it does not comply with all of the requirements in the international convention.
Mr. GILCHREST. When do you expect your investigation to be done?
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Ms. MURTAGH. We expect our report to be out this winter, sir.
Mr. GILCHREST. Any sense of the TROPICALE, I know it is pretty early yet, on how the crew responded?
Admiral NORTH. We are interviewing passengers to make that determination.
Ms. MURTAGH. Yes, sir. We recommended that they survey the passengers and they are doing that.
Admiral NORTH. That investigation is convened as we speak.
Mr. GILCHREST. Admiral North, how difficult would it have been if the TROPICALE could not regain power to off-load those passengers?
Admiral NORTH. Well, depending on what turn the weather took, at that point, as you are aware, there was a tropical storm nearby would have been very difficult. Difficult under good conditions, extraordinarily more difficult obviously under bad weather conditions. So our approach would have been, had that been necessary, to get, as I mentioned earlier through the AMVER process, as many vessels nearby to aid as we could, including our own units, and then if the decision was made that they had to abandon, do it as best we could. I think getting the vessel away from the storm would be, if the situation would permit, first order.
Mr. GILCHREST. Could you tow a vessel that size?
Admiral NORTH. We could not but there are vessels available to do that. One would have to get them to the scene, which could take some time.
Mr. GILCHREST. I have two very quick questions. Should there be a size limitation, would you recommend or has anybody ever thought about recommending a size limitation to a cruise ship? In other words, is there a total number of passengers, we have 5,000, 4,000, 6,000. Could you have a cruise ship that could safely operate with 12,000 people?
Admiral NORTH. That is a pretty hypothetical engineering question, but I would say that we are all concerned about the growth in the size of cruise ships. The latest cruise ship off the waves in terms of passenger capacity is 3,200, and then you add the crew to service that group of passengers and you are near 5,000 people in round numbers.
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Some of the work that is ongoing in IMO is looking at evacuation, looking at subdivision and stability, with those kinds of things in mind in terms of as ships get larger, what are the needs in terms of evacuation due to fire or evacuation due to damage to the vessel that would flood the vessel and how are we doing there, what does this mean to us. So the concern is there. Some of the ongoing work in the various subcommittees in IMO as well as outside of IMO are looking at particularly the evacuation issue.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you. The $18 million settlement by Royal Caribbean Cruises to the U.S. Government, would either one of you want to comment on why or how that came about?
Admiral NORTH. Well, I can speak to that to some degree. First, that was a plea agreement by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line involving six different Federal court jurisdictions representing six different ports in which the vessel either discharged oil or some other material, hazardous material. It was initiated after Coast Guard aircraft saw one of their vessels with a machine discharging some oil, and ultimately a fairly extensive investigation revealed a wide level of violation, and the U.S. Attorney, Justice Department, and obviously the Coast Guard, other agencies participated in trying to pull that together, and that is what the result was.
Mr. GILCHREST. You feel that was a sufficient fine?
Admiral NORTH. It was the largest ever. In addition to the fine, the court also imposed the remediation programs, that is, a court-managed compliance plan the vessel has to follow over the next 5 years to deal with some of those issues. So we are hopeful that obviously that that will have a remedial effect.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much. Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman and I had a little discussion on the way down and I think the Admiral can resolve this. One of the things I see here that concerns me is the fire that took place on the ECSTASY as a result of improper welding techniques, which to me goes to training. There are questions about the initial fire suppression efforts, and maybe if the ship hadn't been docked, the overall fire suppression effort. This pretty much goes to me through training certification. We had two ships, the cruise ship, with a lot of people, crash into a container ship, both modern ships with collision avoidance devices on board. It seems to me a question of something was wrong with the people on the bridge if they were there.
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I don't know about the most recent one, the TROPICALE and that, but I see, a pattern and it disturbs me and it is a very key question, the certification and training of crews. Now, the Chairman and I discussed this on the way down in the elevator, and he says, well, the IMO has to approve all of the training programs. I said that is true, but unlike our FAA or other agencies, so far as I know they have no independent group of inspectors who go around the world, certify that these schools actually exist, monitor the activities at those schools and monitor classes and review the materials. And is that true, Admiral; basically it is sort of a paper certification exercise?
Admiral NORTH. The responsibility is on the flag administration, the Coast Guard in the case of the United States, to ensure that schools within their jurisdiction are complying with STCW standards.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I am sure ours are. That is my concern. I would like to see more American crew on board. I am concerned. I hear very persistent reports that there are a lot of paper schools in the Philippines and you can buy a certificate for virtually anything you want. That causes me grave concern. It can be something as minor as someone who doesn't know how to properly operate a welding machine that could cause a tragic fire, someone who doesn't know proper fire suppression on board techniques, someone who is an incompetent engineer down below who didn't shut off the right valve or whatever happened on the TROPICALE or someone on the bridge who, for whatever reason, ignored collision avoidance on two different ships.
Are we pushing for some sort of independent auditing and inspection of all these schools and not leaving it to up to the flag states? There are certain countries that are well-known for rampant corruption, they are never going to change, and any company that hires there I think is potentially, possibly jeopardizing its passengers, and I know that some of the biggest names in America are hiring there.
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I saw the hiring halls. The hiring halls are people in some cases who go to parks and they nail something on a tree and say if you claim to have this certification, come here and the Disney Company will hire you to work on their ship. I have been shown photographs and videos of this procedure. This does not seem to me to be a particularly rigorous procedure. Don't we have a concern about this?
Admiral NORTH. The process at the moment is that IMO is reviewing the various submissions from flag administrations for compliance with STCW and is going to publish a list of those that they deem to be in compliance. The process does not involve sending someone to the flag state, some worldwide third party to take a look.
Mr. DEFAZIO. If I could, with all due respect, Admiral, that gives me no confidence, gives me zero confidence.
Mr. Hall, I went through this with the Aviation Committee back when Elizabeth Dole laid off all the inspectors. We were basically reduced to a paper inspection agency at the FAA. Didn't that cause some grave concerns at the time that we weren't doing a lot of physical inspections at the NTSB, and don't you think in the case of training schools that would cause you concern if the FAA didn't go out and check the schools to see what kinds of problems we might or might not have?
Mr. HALL. Clearly, Congressman, that is correct, and one of the concerns that we have seen in our investigations is a delegation by the flag ships, flag states to classification. It is growing in the industry to delegate responsibilities for inspection and oversight to the classification societies, and I don't—the classification societies are basically accountable to the industry, and I think it is extremely important that for safety in this area that we have our own independent oversight, and that is done, as you are aware of, to some degree through ICAO and the FAA in the aviation area, and I certainly think there is room for improvement in the cruise ship industry.
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Mr. DEFAZIO. Aren't we in a kind of circular thing here; I might subscribe to a classification society and I don't have to, I can go to another?
Mr. HALL. That is correct.
Mr. DEFAZIO. So if I subscribe to a classification society and I don't want to have them be really rigorous in certifying my crew and crew standardsm, and driving up my costs because my crews actually earn the certificates which they are presenting to get the job. We are creating a free market in the regulation of safety and training essentially.
Mr. HALL. Well, this is just a personal observation, Congressman, because I don't think the Board has investigated this, but I personally went to visit two of these classification societies just to see the number of individuals they actually had, the size of their offices and the number of people that they had working in the inspection area. And I believe the one we visited in England had fewer personnel for their responsibilities than the Safety Board has.
Mr. DEFAZIO. And you are kind of underfunded and underpersoned, as I know.
Mr. HALL. Well, we have a very small organization in the marine area because we have very limited responsibilities.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Oh, you meant than your marine component?
Mr. HALL. Yes. No, the marine investigators.
Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. And what was the other country you visited?
Mr. HALL. One in the United States and one overseas.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Did you go down to Reston where you can walk down the hall, and on the left, what is it, Liberia is on the left and the Marshall Islands is on the right in the same hallway. I understood that Liberia was moving to New York. In fact, I met someone when I was at conference in Amsterdam. He was the new Liberia and they were moving to New York because there had been some concern. This causes me extraordinary concern to say, well, we are relying on the classification society. The classification society has to get some subscribers or purchasers or customers, and so basically they are dependent on how much or how little they want, and you have an industry where some people want the highest standards and other people don't want any standards at all. This is a heck of a way to assure safety, crew training and other things.
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Mr. HALL. Well, I think the industry in terms of fatalities, as Congressman Young pointed out, you know, has a good record over the years, but I think the ECSTASY and the TROPICALE should be wake-up calls to us to be sure that we look again to be sure that we are doing this scrutiny and this inspection before a major catastrophe, not after.
Mr. DEFAZIO. We don't want to duplicate the tombstone mentality of the FAA in this industry.
Mr. HALL. I would like to mention, Congressman, that we are doing an emergency evacuation study, as you know, in the aviation area that will be produced next winter or spring. So I wanted you to be aware that we are looking at that issue, and of course, as you are aware, under derivative certification now, the FAA is permitting computer simulations rather than actual live evacuations for the certification process. That is an area that we will be looking at as part of that study.
Mr. DEFAZIO. I would like to actually hear from some folks on your staff about that because I have long expressed concerns and once got scheduled to actually witness one of these, and it was McDonnell Douglas, and they managed somehow to manipulate it so that they didn't have to get recertified. So I have never actually gotten to witness one, but the accounts I have read do not assure me that these are adequate, real life exercises.
Mr. HALL. I will be glad to have Nora Marshall of our staff contact your office and set up a briefing.
Mr. DEFAZIO. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. I hope you would help clarify some questions over jurisdiction for me because I am curious if on either of those incidents, the passengers were clearly Americans, the overwhelming majority of passengers were American, foreign ship, foreign skipper, foreign crew. What if they had gone to some Third World country as their next port of call? What ability would you, Admiral, or the United States Coast Guard have to have looked at what happened? And Mr. Hall, what ability would you have had? If I understand what happened in the pollution case, they were never really convicted for pollution but for lying to the Coast Guard under oath. That is what they caught them on. Now, you correct me if I am wrong but that was the gotcha.
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So what if, in these instances, to disguise the fact that they made a mistake, they just went straight to a Third World country, paid off somebody to give them a clean bill of health, what ability would you have had to see to it that those Americans on board were protected?
Admiral NORTH. Which one?
Mr. TAYLOR. In any instance. If today a cruise ship has a fire or major catastrophe but instead of turning around and going back to Miami, they go to some Third World country, we know the norm in most of these countries is kickbacks, is bribes. They pay off the right official, get a clean bill of health, despite what the passengers have to say. What jurisdiction would you have in that case and what jurisdiction would you have?
Admiral NORTH. Assuming it was a one-vessel company that never came back to the United States, we would probably not be able to do anything without consent of the state, either the flag state of the vessel or the state in which the vessel was then moored.
Mr. HALL. If the ship operates from a U.S. port and then to the situation you describe, the Coast Guard would have authority. The Safety Board has no authority in that area.
Admiral NORTH. We have authority if there are U.S. passengers on board and the vessel operates from a U.S. port, no matter where the casualty occurs. But you are saying it went to somebody else's jurisdiction.
Mr. TAYLOR. Next port of call.
Admiral NORTH. Then we have to get entry through that jurisdiction to be able to do that work.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Would the gentleman yield. I just want to clarify something. With the word casualty, do we mean fatality or we mean fire, burning, accident? I mean, if an accident—if there is a serious fire at sea.
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Admiral NORTH. Fire, doesn't have to involve fatality, just a casualty, fire.
Mr. DEFAZIO. So we mean casualty, property casualty.
Admiral NORTH. Involving a foreign flag vessel with U.S. passengers on board we have jurisdiction.
Mr. DEFAZIO. No matter where it is at sea, OK.
Admiral NORTH. But exercising that jurisdiction at some point becomes the issue, and it depends how you define the circumstances under which you are trying to exercise it.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, the staff just pointed out, there is an exception. In the case, the English Channel, in that case—.
Admiral NORTH. We have had accidents that occurred—.
Mr. TAYLOR. OK. My follow-up question would be, if my memory serves me right, Admiral North, a tanker pulls into an American coastal port, regardless of where they are from, does someone there have to have a tankerman certificate from our Coast Guard or will a certificate from anyone's coast guard do for them to unload their product?
Admiral NORTH. If it is a foreign flag tanker, they do not have to have a Coast Guard issued document.
Mr. TAYLOR. How about someone on the shore facility, though?
Admiral NORTH. The shore facility, if it is an oil transfer facility, has to have an operations manual and personnel designated as person in charge on that side trained in the operation of the facility. It is not a Coast Guard merchant mariner's document.
Mr. TAYLOR. Somebody there has been checked out, involved in this process? The flip side is, again, if there is a major catastrophe on a cruise ship, you really don't have anyone that you have certified on board, right? They literally all could be carrying Panamanian, Bahamanian, Liberian documents? As I said, the norm around the world is kickbacks, bribes.
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Admiral NORTH. Part of the process of our examination of the vessel periodically is to ensure that they have licensed and certified people on board from their flag.
Mr. TAYLOR. From wherever, but we have no way of knowing just how good—.
Admiral NORTH. They have a safe manning document that the flag administration issues and part of our purpose is to see that they are manned according to the safe manning document.
Mr. TAYLOR. Since hopefully there is an end game to all of this and that we are not just having this hearing to be a debating society, my question to both of you would be, and I will preface it. When we passed the Oil Pollution Act in 1990 we said to the world community, you want to bring your tanker here, if you want to bring your barge here, by a date certain you are going to have to have a double hulled vessel just to come in to our waters, we don't care where you come from. These are rules. Regardless of where you come from, if you want the privilege of selling your product in the United States you are going to live by our rules.
Would it behoove our Nation, since I think approximately 90 percent of all the people who get on a cruise ship anywhere, the vast majority of them board a cruise ship here, would it behoove our Nation from a safety standpoint to come up with a similar set of requirements and say we don't care what your documents look like, we don't care where your ship comes from, but if you come here, you are going to live by these rules, all the way from the cleanliness standards in the kitchen to the ability of an elevator to operate and the ship is on fire and you have a person of limited mobility, make sure that that elevator has got power or someone is there to carry that person up a stairwell, someone is there to put them on the lifeboat. These are going to be the rules if you want to operate in our market.
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Mr. Hall, do you think our Nation would be well served by doing that?
Mr. HALL. Well, I think that, Congressman, that the Coast Guard, as well as the cruise line industry, need to understand the risk that we now have with the growing number of passengers and cruise ships operating, and if the international industry and the cruise lines are not willing to provide the levels of safety that the American people should expect, then, yes, I would agree with you that the Coast Guard should take action in that area.
Mr. TAYLOR. Do you think it makes sense to have a double standard as far as just the inspection of vessels? By the admiral's own testimony, a foreign cruise ship is hauled once every 5-years to get a good close look at the hull. The American vessel doing the same thing—.
Admiral NORTH. I said twice in every 5 years.
Mr. TAYLOR. Foreign cruise ship?
Admiral NORTH. Yes.
Mr. TAYLOR. And we are once every other year?
Admiral NORTH. No. We are every two years. They are twice in every 5 years.
Mr. TAYLOR. So we are still more often than them.
Admiral NORTH. It is very similar. It probably differs by a few months.
Mr. TAYLOR. We are still more often than them, if I am not correct, because technically that could have an expectation, go out and bend the shift, haul it right then and then they go 4 years without an inspection, am I not correct? That is twice every five years.
Admiral NORTH. If their bent shaft will allow them to operate, I suppose.
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Mr. TAYLOR. I am just saying theoretically they could go 48 months with no inspection if they have had two back to back.
Admiral NORTH. No, twice in every 5 years. You can't do it this week and next week.
Mr. TAYLOR. Is that spelled out?
Admiral NORTH. Depends on the class society rules, but basically, yes sir. You would have to go digging into international standards and the class rules to figure that out, but you can't do it twice, dry dock it, float it, dry dock it, and then say I have met my twice in 5-year requirement. That would not work.
Mr. TAYLOR. Well, how long is the interval?
Admiral NORTH. It would depend on the class society. I can't tell you the interval, the minimum interval, but I can say that the way the rule is worded, the process is worded, that would not happen.
Mr. TAYLOR. Let me give you a specific instance. The NEW AMSTERDAM was under, I can't remember if it was Liberia or Panamanian, is now because of the agreement we have reached with American class lines will be American flagged. Are you going to tell me that the NEW AMSTERDAM now that is flying an American flag will not have to be hauled more often than it was under a foreign?
Admiral NORTH. The NEW AMSTERDAM will have to be hauled as our requirements require it.
Mr. TAYLOR. Is that more often or less often?
Admiral NORTH. It can be more often. It averages out to more often, yes.
Mr. TAYLOR. We are all on the same team there, Admiral.
Admiral NORTH. I say it averages out to more often. It depends on the circumstances you want to construct, but it averages out to more often.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Well, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Admiral NORTH. The more often you can look at something the better.
Mr. TAYLOR. Because I was getting ready to say, if it was a bad thing, I have got some friends in the Oil Patch who would just not haul their boats as often as they do. So would it not behoove our Nation, just as we tell those ships that come to our Nation to deliver oil or chemicals that you are going to live by our rules in order to bring your ship here, would it not behoove our Nation to do the same thing for passenger vessels?
Admiral NORTH. Are you asking me?
Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, sir.
Admiral NORTH. Well, we have an equivalent set of standards, as far as we are concerned as far as safety goes today. We have unique U.S. rules that they must comply with in addition to that, in terms of navigation safety and environmental protection. There are Clean Water Act rules that apply to any foreign vessel that calls in the U.S. that they don't have to comply with elsewhere, that are over and above international standards.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Hall.
Mr. HALL. Generally, Congressman, the United States should be the leader in the world in every area of public safety, and you know, when we have areas and we see room for improvement in what is a very dynamic, growing and changing environment, we need to try to address the safety needs.
Mr. TAYLOR. Do you get the impression that the American public perceives that we have this jurisdiction?
Mr. HALL. I would not speak for the—Congressman, I don't know what the perception is of the American public. We do get some understanding basically from the interviews that we have done after emergencies in which people believed that maybe there are more protections from the United States than there really are in this area. That would be the only thing.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
Admiral North and Mr. Hall, we appreciate your testimony this morning under the hot lights and the interesting verbal exchange that we have had here. We look forward to continuing our relationship. I had a number of other questions, as I think some of the other members, but what we would like to do is write them down and send them to you and get a response and maybe a follow-up meeting, whether it is a hearing or not, I am not sure, but a follow-up meeting, and one of those arenas is the collaborative efforts that NTSB has with the Coast Guard on all of the issues that we have discussed today, the kinds of communication that the Coast Guard and the NTSB has with these incidents and to further some of the concerns that Mr. DeFazio expressed and that Mr. Taylor expressed. Gentlemen and Ms. Murtagh, thank you very much.
Our next panel that we will introduce is Cynthia Colenda, President, International Council of Cruise Lines; and Edmund Welch, Legislative Director, Passenger Vessel Association.
Does everybody want sixty seconds to stretch? You want to take a sixty-second break and stretch, stand up and do a couple of deep knee bends, sixty seconds?
Ms. Colenda and Mr. Welch, we appreciate you coming here this afternoon now to give us your testimony, and we will add it to the mix of information that we receive to ensure that the cruise industry is profitable, economically viable and very safe for passengers.
Ms. Colenda, you may go first.
TESTIMONY OF CYNTHIA A. COLENDA, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF CRUISE LINES, ACCOMPANIED BY CAPTAIN THOMAS E. ''TED'' THOMPSON, USCG RET., VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS, ICCL; AND EDMUND B. WELCH, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, PASSENGER VESSEL ASSOCIATION, ACCOMPANIED BY CAPTAIN PETER LAURIDSEN, USCG RET., PVA'S REGULATORY CONSULTANT
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Ms. COLENDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon. I would like to introduce to my left my Vice President of International Operations, Ted Thompson, who is a former Coast Guard retired captain.
On behalf of the International Council of Cruise Lines we are pleased to appear before the subcommittee today to discuss industry progress on several areas of interest to the subcommittee.
ICCL is a nonprofit trade association that represents the interests of 17 cruise lines operating in international and domestic markets. ICCL member cruise lines serve major ports in the United States and call on more than 300 ports around the world. Last year ICCL's cruise operators carried more than 5 million passengers on 95 vessels. The committee has requested that ICCL address five major issue areas in our testimony. The first topic I would like to discuss is the economic impact of our industry here in the United States.
The cruise industry and its U.S. business partners stimulate business activity, economic benefits and jobs throughout the United States. The total economic impact of the cruise lines, their passengers and our U.S. suppliers reaped $11.6 billion in 1997, according to a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates. These industry expenditures were responsible for generating 176,000 jobs for U.S. citizens.
A second study concluded recently looked at the direct spending of the cruise industry and its passengers on U.S. goods and services. In 1997 we poured $7 billion back into the U.S. economy and our economic impact extended to all 50 States. In fact, Chairman Gilchrest, I was interested to note that in your State of Maryland our industry in 1997 contributed nearly $70 million.
The cruise industry's highest priority is to protect the safety of our passengers and crew. Our industry's commitment to safety is demonstrated by our excellent safety record. In 1996 the U.S. Coast Guard concluded that our industry was one of the safest modes of transportation available and that international safety initiatives coming into force would further improve our safety record.
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In fact, over the past decade an estimated 44 million passengers enjoyed a cruise vacation, and during this period, not one passenger death due to marine incident was reported on any of our ICCL member vessels operating from a U.S. port.
This enviable safety record is the result of the importance that our industry places on safety. Of course, our industry cannot be complacent. We are always looking for ways to improve our performance. Our focus in the safety area includes participation in the development of IMO initiatives and a formalized partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard. We believe this partnership is successful because it provides an effective mechanism forum for information exchange on emerging safety issues. These efforts form the cornerstone of the industry's safety activities.
The cruise industry has a vested interest in protecting the beauty of the oceans upon where our vessels sail. The environmental standards that apply to our industry are stringent and comprehensive. With the International Maritime Organization, the United States and other maritime nations have developed consistent and uniform international standards that apply to all vessels engaged in international commerce. The U.S. Coast Guard enforces all international and domestic laws.
The cruise industry's commitment to protecting the environment is demonstrated by the recent adoption of a new ICCL policy regarding the handling, disposal of waste materials on board cruise vessels. The primary goal of this new policy is to strengthen and enhance our waste management and disposal practices and to minimize the impact of our vessel operations on the ports and places we visit. ICCL and its environmental committee experts will work with the U.S. Coast Guard and appropriate agencies to further implement this industry policy.
In the area of medical facilities, the cruise industry has taken a very proactive role in providing onboard medical care for our passengers. In 1996 in the absence of regulation in this area, ICCL issued medical facilities guidelines that deal with the facilities, staffing and equipment utilized on board passenger vessels. These guidelines represent the work of a group of experienced medical physicians and other medical experts knowledgeable about the unique needs and limitations of ship board medical care. ICCL worked in conjunction with the American College of Emergency Physicians on this.
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I am running a little bit over, Mr. Chairman, I am sorry.
The ICCL medical facility guidelines are generally intended to foster the following goals: To provide reasonable emergency medical care for passengers and crew on board our vessels; to stabilize patients and initiate appropriate care; and to facilitate the evacuation of seriously ill or injured patients when deemed necessary by shipboard physician.
ICCL and medical facility experts meet annually with the American College of Emergency Physicians to discuss new developments as well as update published guidelines in this area, and as a matter of fact, we have a meeting with them next week.
The cruise industry takes any and all cases of reported crimes on board our ships seriously. With more than 5 million passengers cruising each year, the industry takes every precaution to ensure that our passengers are safe and that they have a fun, enjoyable experience on board.
A cruise ship is inherently secure because it is a controlled environment with limited access. In July, ICCL's executive adopted an industry-wide standard for dealing with the investigation and reporting of crimes committed on board cruise ships. This statement of zero tolerance for any crime committed on board our vessels requires reporting of all serious crimes involving U.S. citizens to the FBI for further investigation.
ICCL's member lines have taken proactive steps to address significant issues. Cruising is one of the most popular vacation options in large part because of the excellent safety record and the high level of quality service provided on board our vessels. The cruise industry is committed to providing a secure environment for its passengers and crew. We will continue to work with all appropriate international and domestic agencies to ensure the safety and well-being of all passengers and crew on board our vessels. We maintain our commitment to operate in a responsible manner and intend to demonstrate this commitment through the continued development of new industry policies and guidelines.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you. We will hear from Mr. Welch and then go down to the vote and then we will be right back. Mr. Welch.
Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Ed Welch. I am Legislative Director of the Passenger Vessel Association, and accompanying me is Captain Peter Lauridsen, Retired, of the Coast Guard, regulatory consultant.
The Passenger Vessel Association is the national voice of U.S. flag passenger vessels of all types, and we represent members who operate overnight cruise ships in the coastwise trade of the U.S. and in waters of adjacent countries. This U.S. flag passenger vessel industry has a strong safety record, but our members and our association continue to stress safety improvements.
The Coast Guard has full regulatory and statutory jurisdiction over our vessels, no matter where they operate, and we work cooperatively with the Coast Guard to achieve safety goals. Occasionally someone operates under the misimpression that there aren't any U.S. flag overnight passenger vessels, but it is not so. There is a vibrant and exciting segment in the U.S. trades that consists of small and medium sized passenger vessels, and we represent most of these companies. Also in Hawaii a PVA member operates the large U.S. flag cruise ship sailing between the islands there, and that company has embarked on an expansion plan that will build two new large cruise ships in a U.S. shipyard and place them into service in Hawaii. So our segment of the industry is thriving and growing.
Our vessels fall within the regulatory jurisdiction of the Coast Guard at all times, even in foreign waters or on the high seas. Coast Guard jurisdiction follows the U.S. flag. There is never any question as to whether the Coast Guard has the authority to enforce safety rules on our vessels fully and completely. Our vessels are subject to plan review for regulatory compliance before construction starts. From that point on, through construction and throughout the vessel's life, we have a regular extensive inspection for compliance with all the rigorous standards imposed by the Coast Guard in a number of safety areas.
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The Coast Guard has an additional safety enforcement mechanism with regard to our vessels. It issues the licenses for all our officers and the documents for those seamen that are required to have them. Thus, the Coast Guard has jurisdiction over the individuals who serve as our crews, and should circumstances require it, they can take suspension and revocation action against those documents. They can even refer cases for criminal sanctions to the Department of Justice.
We pointed out that our U.S. flag passenger vessels must pass rigorous inspections by the Coast Guard, and this is an inspection that is characterized as a flag-state inspection. Admiral North was talking about the type of port-state inspections that they do for non-U.S. flag vessels that come to our shores. We believe that the strongest possible inspection that can be done is a flag-state inspection done by a competent enforcement agency like the Coast Guard.
Another aspect of safety oversight has to do with determination of cause when there is a casualty. If such an incident occurs involving a U.S. flag vessel anywhere in the world, the Coast Guard has the legal power to investigate and so does the National Transportation Safety Board. There is just no doubt about it whatsoever.
There is one other aspect of cruise ship operation that is critical to safety, the ability of the members of a ship's crew to communicate clearly in English with one another and with the passengers. It is common sense that if you have limitations with spoken English, it is going to show up in a stressful emergency situation. Yet that is the time when the ability to communicate in English is most necessary. You can be sure that the crews on our U.S. flag vessels are all fluent in English.
Let me mention several safety initiatives undertaken by our association and its members. We and the Coast Guard have established a partnership action team, and this enables us to meet regularly with high-ranking Coast Guard officials to explain our problems for them, to listen their concerns and to work out issues of mutual concern, and we focus on safety in that a lot. With the PVA's help the Coast Guard has adopted a self-inspection program for Coast Guard certificated passenger vessels. This is similar in concept to the ISM safety code and it encourages a vessel operator to document his operations so that his own employees become daily safety inspectors.
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We have produced a PVA risk guide in conjunction with the Coast Guard that helps operators analyze their risk. We are working on standards for high-speed passenger vessels with the Coast Guard, and we have been trying to encourage our members to improve their medical facilities and medical training. We just had a meeting out on the West coast where we had a doctor present information on the usefulness of defibrillators on vessels.
So we extensively promote safety as an association. We work cooperatively with the Coast Guard to promote safety, and Mr. Chairman, we would be glad to respond in more detail to any questions you have.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much, Mr. Welch. We will recess for 15 minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. GILCHREST. The hearing will come to order. Again, we apologize for the votes, but that is the way our system works. I was just curious if I might ask, Mr. Welch, the gentleman behind you is a former Coast Guard?
Mr. WELCH. Captain Peter Lauridsen, and he is our regulatory consultant.
Mr. GILCHREST. And Ms. Colenda, your aide here today is a former Coast Guard?
Ms. COLENDA. Ted Thompson, ICCL's Vice President of International Operations.
Mr. GILCHREST. What did you do in the Coast Guard?
Captain THOMPSON. I retired as a captain out of the Commanding Officer of the Marine Safety Office, New Orleans. I spent my last 23 years in the Coast Guard in marine safety.
Mr. GILCHREST. I was just curious, do either of you, since you seem to be on fairly different—you are playing different roles—do either of you communicate about safety aspects whether it is fire, fire alarms, voice data recorders, those kinds of things because you represent in some ways two different sides of this industry?
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Captain LAURIDSEN. Mr. Chairman, I think our roles are almost parallel. I think we are both interested in safety, the standards, the implementation and the enforcement thereof. Ted and I know one another from the Coast Guard. Ted and I converse periodically on international standards and standards that may be coming forth in domestic. So there is an interaction between us. Just as I am not sure the public discerns a difference between foreign and domestic, we see safety as being a common issue.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you.
Ms. COLENDA. I would like to comment that about 2 or 3 years ago the Coast Guard facilitated a safety hearing in Boston, and both of our organizations participated in that, and it was widely attended by Coast Guard marine safety officers from all over the country. There were several hundred people there. It was at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Boston.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you. Ms. Colenda, the most recent incident, the TROPICALE, I would be interested in getting your sense of how the crew responded under those circumstances, which were obviously fairly difficult, and would you make any recommendations to change what they did or improve what they did and was there—we have heard on the news that there was about a 12-hour—I don't know if this is fact or not—but was there about a 12-hour delay between the time there was a fire and the time the passengers were told there was a fire?
Ms. COLENDA. I don't know all the details of that, Chairman Gilchrest, but what I do know is that I think what you might be referring to is the fact that the passengers were at their muster station for a long period of time. What I do understand is that the passengers were informed throughout the emergency. They were at their muster stations as they were supposed to be. The crew responded, as well as did the fire safety systems, to put out the fire, and I believe that there is an ongoing investigation with the Coast Guard in Tampa which started on Monday, and I don't know all the details, but what I do understand is that the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board are currently working with the line on all those details.
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Mr. GILCHREST. As the president of the International Council of Cruise Lines, that is your role, we asked Admiral North and Mr. Hall a question about the $18 million settlement from the oily bilge water that was found discharged off the coast of the United States. Are you aware from your position if there was any environmental damage done as a result of that discharge, and what are your members doing to assure their vessels will not violate international and U.S. law again?
Ms. COLENDA. As I understand it, Chairman Gilchrest, there hasn't been any determination of environmental damage in that specific incident, but what I do know, as an industry association, what we have done is reaffirmed our commitment to protecting the environment, and our goals for the future are looking for ways to improve, and what we have done by the development of this industry policy on environment is to agree to do everything that we can to look at procedures, to improve for the future, and our goal is to minimize the impact of our operations on the environment, and we have submitted in our testimony the major components of our ICCL policy in the environment.
Mr. GILCHREST. Would you know the details of the change of policy as far as an oily bilge water discharge. Now, do you have any idea what is done now with that bilge water? Instead of just discharging it, is there some type of engineering separation facility that has been installed on that ship?
Ms. COLENDA. What I do know is that Royal Caribbean has put an environmental officer on board every one of its vessels, that it has installed some new technology, improved oily water separation technology on its vessels to deal with those kinds of issues in the future, and our industry learns from every incident that occurs of this type and looks for ways to improve, and I know that Royal Caribbean has been committed to improving its performance and has gone to great measures to improve all of its on-board waste handling procedures.
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Mr. GILCHREST. I see. My time is up. I will come back for a second round, but I will yield now to Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is great to have both of you here now. I would like to do a bit of comparison between the industries that you represent, the Passenger Vessel Association, U.S. flagged, U.S. owned, and Cynthia, your association, the foreign cruise ship industry. Mr. Welch, are your crew members subject to drug testing?
Mr. WELCH. There is a drug testing requirement. I think Captain Lauridsen can tell you the specifics of it.
Captain LAURIDSEN. Yes, sir, they are subject to pre-employment, periodic testing, post-casualty testing, and I think there is one other instance, for cause. So, yes, there is a drug testing program.
Mr. TAYLOR. Ms. Colenda, tell me about on the foreign cruise ships.
Ms. COLENDA. I am going to have to ask Ted to answer that question.
Captain THOMPSON. Mr. Taylor, the cruise operators with the ICCL have random drug testing, and after any incident or accident, they pursue mandatory drug testing.
Mr. TAYLOR. Is it mandatory now?
Captain THOMPSON. It is not mandated by the Coast Guard, but our member lines do require it after an accident.
Mr. TAYLOR. OK. So you are sailing side by side down the Mississippi River from New Orleans with an American vessel, he has to be tested, your crew does not?
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Captain THOMPSON. In U.S. waters we would be required to be tested, yes, sir.
Mr. TAYLOR. So the ships that call on United States are tested, the crews?
Captain THOMPSON. If there is an incident.
Mr. TAYLOR. What if there isn't an incident? Why wait until after the fact is my question?
Captain THOMPSON. As I said earlier, sir, they have voluntary testing.
Mr. TAYLOR. And the galleys on these vessels, Mr. Welch, who inspects yours? Where does it get its certificate of inspection.
Mr. WELCH. It is a little bit of a gray area, Congressman. There is FDA jurisdiction and there is also state health department jurisdiction, and to be honest about it, one or the other exercises jurisdiction, and there is some uncertainty as to which one does in particular areas.
Mr. TAYLOR. Ms. Colenda.
Ms. COLENDA. We get inspected by the Centers for Disease Control, Public Health Service on a regular basis, and they inspect us twice a year, and they are unannounced inspections, and in the case of any kind of specific concern, public health, we have an ongoing relationship with the Centers for Disease Control. They actually train our galley personnel. Actually last year I think we put at least five or six hundred people through that program. So we deal with the Centers for Disease Control.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Welch, on the subject of safety, tell me how often your vessels are inspected by the Coast Guard, and the follow up would be again, since at least by my casual observation, you do have a preponderance of passengers who tend to be senior citizens. Are you subject to laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act?
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Mr. WELCH. Well, we are certainly subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act. I am going to ask Captain Lauridsen to talk to you about the specifics of the inspections because they differ depending on the type of vessel.
Captain LAURIDSEN. Passenger vessels inspected under subchapter H, the larger passenger vessels, are issued an annual certificate, inspected annually, and reinspected quarterly. Small passenger vessel, if it carries a SOLAS certificate—.
Mr. TAYLOR. Let us try to keep it to the larger vessels, because I think that is where we want to draw the apples to apples analogy.
Captain LAURIDSEN. Annually, with quarterly reinspections.
Ms. COLENDA. Same with our industry, we have annual inspections.
Mr. TAYLOR. By whom?
Ms. COLENDA. The United States Coast Guard.
Mr. TAYLOR. And quarterly as well?
Ms. COLENDA. Right.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Welch, could you give me some idea, since you are both using the same ports which have to be dredged by the Corps of Engineers at fairly enormous expense, both will call on the Coast Guard should there be a fire or disturbance. Both undoubtedly if there was a hostage situation would call the United States Navy SEALS and not the Liberian SEALS or the Panamanian SEALS. The track record isn't so hot there. Could you give me some idea how much your organization pays in taxes?
Mr. WELCH. I assume you mean our companies. I don't have statistics, but they are all U.S. corporations. They are subject to U.S. income taxes and state income taxes. The U.S. income taxes follow the flag, so even if we have a vessel that goes down to Mexico and operates in the Sea of Cortez for the winter, they are still subject to U.S. income taxes for that income even if it is not in the United States. I don't have statistics, though.
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Mr. TAYLOR. But they are subject to United States corporate income taxes, just like any other corporation?
Mr. WELCH. And the crews that are U.S. citizens are subject to U.S. income taxes, too.
Mr. TAYLOR. Ms. Colenda.
Ms. COLENDA. In the case of our industry we pay millions of dollars of user fees, and specifically on the port dredging, we do pay the harbor maintenance and dredging user fee to the Corps of Engineers. I think it is collected by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Mr. TAYLOR. Corporate income tax?
Ms. COLENDA. Our lines don't pay corporate income tax by virtue of the fact—.
Mr. TAYLOR. And your crew members, do they pay American income tax?
Ms. COLENDA. All of shoreside employees pay American taxes.
Mr. TAYLOR. Your crew members.
Ms. COLENDA. Our crew members don't pay corporate taxes or personal taxes if they are non-U.S. citizens.
Mr. TAYLOR. I guess that means if one of them gets seriously ill at sea they wouldn't think of calling the American Coast Guard to send a helicopter out for them?
Ms. COLENDA. We have provision of on-board medical care for our crew members on our vessels, and we provide the medical care for our crew members.
Mr. TAYLOR. If they catch on fire, they won't be calling the American Coast Guard to put it out?
Ms. COLENDA. When there is an incident that occurs, we have relied on the U.S. Coast Guard, and they come and inspect our vessels.
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Mr. TAYLOR. And of course if there is a hostage situation, they wouldn't think of calling the American Delta Force or the American SEALS to come bail them out?
Ms. COLENDA. In the area of security, our security plans are actually preapproved by the U.S. Coast Guard as required by U.S. law, and the industry has security plans in place to deal with various contingencies.
Mr. TAYLOR. I see the red light.
Mr. GILCHREST. OK, Mr. Taylor. Thank you. Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I get repetitive, someone just speak up because I had to speak to someone in the hall, my 12:30 appointment.
I guess I would like to go along some of the issues Mr. Hall raised, and I am hoping to see here, and a note I have got here, 'top cruise line executives announce plans to enhance environmental standards,' voluntary standards, that go beyond the requirements of law, October 4th, 1999, and then earlier this year we had the reporting to the FBI the crimes. So I guess I am hoping we are seeing an attitude here where we are on a roll, and so I am going to ask how about some of the concerns Mr. Hall raised about the individual sounding smoke alarms, the emergency call buttons, trained emergency response teams? Can we expect perhaps we will hear an announcement from the industry in the near future that they are going to go down that path?
Ms. COLENDA. Congressman DeFazio, in the case of all the NTSB recommendations we have responded to the NTSB and taken many of their recommendations and employed them on our member vessels. Specifically in the case of some of the issues that he discussed, the local sounding fire alarm, and that issue I know that is coming up before the IMO for discussion, we have submitted comments to the National Transportation Safety Board specifically on that recommendation.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Positive or negative?
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Ms. COLENDA. What we think of that specific area, and we are looking—what we have done on local sounding fire alarms, in that area what we do right now is we have a system where there is a notification that goes off on the bridge.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, I am familiar.
Ms. COLENDA. A team actually goes down to the cabin and determines what the cause of the alarm is, and if it is an emergency, if it is determined to be an emergency, then we respond accordingly.
Mr. DEFAZIO. If I can interrupt, I mean I think this is a really serious issue, and I wish the industry would look at it again, because my concern is you lose your electrical systems and your backup electrical systems, having remote sounding battery operated alarms would be very preferable to a centralized system, and we have had recent cases of loss of the electrical system.
If you have problems with the bridge personnel, whatever they were on those two ships with automated collision avoidance systems in the English Channel, which we might or might not ever know, then you could certainly have the same problem with a large panel that has 2,000 red lights on it for individual smoke alarms or more than 2,000 because I am sure there is one in each room and then probably hundreds or thousands of others throughout the ship or maybe that little light for that room is burned out. I really would hope that it isn't being resisted because of the small expense involved, and I bet if you asked your passengers—it is just kind of the question I ask people on airplanes all the time—would you pay one cent more because maybe that is what it would figure out to per passenger per year in the cruise line industry to have one of those alarms in every room, they would all say, heck, yeah, I would even pay a quarter.
So I would hope you would look at it. The other things he raised, the emergency call buttons, the response teams, I think is important, and that goes to another issue where I would hope that the industry is going to act independent of the IMO. As I said to the admiral, I am not reassured by depending upon the IMO. In many cases, it is a consensus based organization that is operating at a pretty low standard, and in the case of crew training, that is something that I think is critically important, and the fact that it is widely alleged and not in any significant way disputed that in the Philippines and in other countries you can buy virtually any certificate you want, I mean God only knows, hopefully not a master's certificate, but virtually anything else without actually attending any school or school that doesn't exist, that is certified on paper by the IMO, I take no solace in the fact that the IMO maybe is going to require another piece of paper. I would like to see the industry lead the way to pressure the IMO to actually do real inspections, to go out and make sure the schools actually exist, that people are actually following a curriculum.
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That is a real concern, and I am trying to be helpful here. I know, obviously people are going to start adding up the numbers and say this isn't helpful. It is helpful, because what happens is the alternative is we have a tragedy and then you are going to get all sorts of pressure on the other side to do regulation that goes far beyond some of the things I am suggesting.
Mr. Welch, could you just address the issue of training? I mean, does someone go out and actually inspect the schools in the United States that train the crew members?
Mr. WELCH. The Coast Guard certifies training courses.
Mr. DEFAZIO. I mean, is it just a paper exercise?
Captain LAURIDSEN. The provision is not for a paper exercise, but I think Admiral North is best to answer. There is some sort of validation process beyond paper, and I believe it falls to the local office to validate that indeed the school is this or the course is as it is advertised.
Mr. DEFAZIO. And the Coast Guard is involved in the actual testing procedure?
Captain LAURIDSEN. Yes.
Ms. COLENDA. Can I respond?
Mr. WELCH. There has been some discussion within the U.S. Government as a policy matter of shifting the actual testing from the Coast Guard to some of the private entities instead of the Coast Guard marine testing facilities. That is controversial within our association, and it is something that has not been decided on by the Coast Guard, but there is certainly some thought within the Coast Guard of going in that direction.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, the Coast Guard has a recommendation on that. Ms. Colenda, I am sorry.
Ms. COLENDA. Congressman DeFazio, we do have training, and we are inspected by the Coast Guard, and part of their inspection does include running drills with our crew. We have several shoreside training schools here in the United States, two in Florida that are fire protection schools, that we send our employees to deal with advanced fire safety training, and so we both—under the STCW requirements that are enhanced crew training requirements for all crew on board our vessels, but we do get—not only do the cruise lines train their crew to respond to various emergencies, but these training exercises are conducted on a regular basis with the Coast Guard as part of the control verification examinations.
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I do know that during the annual inspection, which is usually much lengthier than the quarterly inspection, these kinds of drills are run with our crew with the Coast Guard, and I would love to be able to have someone at the table here to be able to talk to you about some of the fire training schools that the industry uses. I know that Ted can discuss some of the fire training schools that the industry has used here landside in the United States. We do run thousands of our crew members through this training.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, we are out of time, but I would appreciate some supplemental follow up. Perhaps I can meet with someone and hear more about that, but it is still—and that would be good in that one specific area, and that is an area of very critical concern to me, the fire, because of the potential there, but I have other concerns. And they don't just extend to cruise line industry. They extend to the cargo industry as well about, crew competency and training and the fellow who managed to anchor his ship off my largest port alee shore coming with a very large storm and then open up the hatches on the ship because he wanted to save time when and if he ever got into the harbor, the bar was about to close. So you have got to wonder where he went to school and it was in the Philippines somewhere if he did.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. Ms. Colenda, and I will ask the same question to Mr. Welch, how many cruise ships does your council represent?
Ms. COLENDA. The ICCL membership represents 95 vessels that operate worldwide.
Mr. GILCHREST. What is the percentage on those 95 vessels of American passengers?
Ms. COLENDA. It is about 80 percent American passengers.
Mr. GILCHREST. How many different countries are represented in those 95 vessels?
Ms. COLENDA. Countries?
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Mr. GILCHREST. How many countries represent those 95 vessels?
Ms. COLENDA. Our membership is flagged in six different countries.
Mr. GILCHREST. So six different countries have 95 vessels. Do each of those six different countries or owners of those vessels coordinate the activity of what crews are hired and where those crews were trained.
Ms. COLENDA. I am not sure I understand the question you asked.
Mr. GILCHREST. Each one of those vessels has a crew, and you mentioned that those crews to some extent are trained in fire safety at facilities in the United States. Do you have any idea where the bulk of the crews come from, which country, and then where the bulk of those people are trained before they are hired?
Ms. COLENDA. I think if you are talking about the deck and engine officers, primarily, in our membership those officers come from three or four countries.
Mr. GILCHREST. When you say the deck officers, you are talking about the captain, pilot, the officers of the ship?
Ms. COLENDA. Right.
Mr. GILCHREST. They come from—.
Ms. COLENDA. Countries like the United Kingdom, Norway, Greece and Italy.
Mr. GILCHREST. And then the crew themselves, maybe the people who do the laundry, the people who sweep the decks, the people who toil in the engine room just to some extent who maybe don't have a college education.
Ms. COLENDA. Depending upon what company we are talking about, but as an industry, after you get into the hotel side of the vessel, we have representation from countries around the world.
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Mr. GILCHREST. The people on the hotel side would be the people who make the beds and things like that, maybe serve food or whatever. What is the extent of their training for accidents aboard that vessel as opposed to someone that might work in the boiler room or the engine room?
Ms. COLENDA. I believe that STCW requires two different kinds of training depending upon what crew we are talking about. If you have a safety related responsibility on board, there are significant requirements for advance training.
Mr. GILCHREST. Where do they get that instruction?
Captain THOMPSON. In general, they get the initial instruction at various schools in the countries the industry hires their staff from, and those schools are inspected by our members to assure that they are meeting international standards. Now, after the hotel staff comes aboard, there is additional safety training as well as training in their specific onboard duties. Every member, every crew member whether they be navigation and engineering staff aboard our ship or the hotel staff are trained specifically in the duties they are expected to carry out in the normal operation of the ship as well as the specific duties they may be expected to carry out in any emergency.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Welch, would you see from your position any difference, small or significant, between the training of crews on domestic cruise lines compared to the training of crews on internationally flagged vessels?
Mr. WELCH. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am not sure that I can fairly characterize the training on vessels other than ours. I just don't have the knowledge to make that comparison, but all of our officers have to have various types of training that are necessary to sit for and pass their Coast Guard examinations. Various folks, some of the deck crews do have to be documented mariners. So they have to go through the training that is necessary to pass the Coast Guard examination for that.
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Most of our vessels are smaller vessels so the crews are going to be smaller than the vessels operated by the ICCL members, but I think it is probably true, certainly accurate on our vessels, that in an emergency, every person employed by the vessel is going to have some kind of safety or response responsibility. So you want to make sure those people know what they are doing and are able to communicate and exude confidence to the passengers that they are trying to direct.
Mr. GILCHREST. Would you say, Mr. Welch, that the international cruise lines have an advantage over the U.S. industry in any way?
Mr. WELCH. Well, we are subject to a number of laws that impose costs on us that they don't have to—.
Mr. GILCHREST. Could you give us an example of those costs?
Mr. WELCH. They range everything from the employment laws. We are subject to all the U.S. employment laws that would apply to a shoreside employer, and that would start with the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, minimum wage, maximum hours. Then there are a host of regulatory laws that we are subject to, the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to our vessels. The oversight of the Coast Guard differs in the respect that the Coast Guard can take action against us directly.
In other words, if one of our people screws up and they want to take away the license of the officer, the Coast Guard itself has the authority to do that or if they want to take away the certification for our vessel, they can do that on their own. They don't have to work with the flag state to initiate the corrective action. So that would be a difference. That is not to say that the Coast Guard doesn't have jurisdiction, it is just that they exercise it in a different way.
Mr. GILCHREST. Ms. Colenda, you want to respond to that specific question?
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Ms. COLENDA. In regard to the kinds of regulations that we comply with, we have both stringent international standards and these are enforced by the U.S. Coast Guard. The fact that the Coast Guard has the ability to hold a vessel in a U.S. port is a very strong a very strong incentive for our industry to perform as expected. The ICCL members have this active partnership with the Coast Guard. We deal on a host of issues. We have for the past several years done numerous industry-wide emergency drills. We actually have done a drill that included passengers in the Port of Tampa when I think over 800 passengers were involved. So we have conducted, with the Coast Guard, we have gone through various emergency responses. They test our capabilities. We identify lessons learned from marine casualties.
So we have an excellent relationship both with port state, the major port state where we operate here in the United States for those vessels calling here, and you have the IMO as a comprehensive safety agency that oversees our vessels' operations. You have the international maritime rules and regulations that are enforced here in the United States for vessels calling in the United States by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman, if I might, one other aspect of this. Yesterday I was testifying over before a Senate committee. They had before them a bill that would allow foreign-flag passenger vessels under some circumstance to serve in the U.S. domestic trade which right now they are forbidden to do. We have some great concerns about that. That could potentially set up a situation where you would have our operators having to abide by all sorts of economic and regulatory laws that might not apply to foreign flag competitors coming into the same trade. So we were testifying about our concerns about that over in the Senate, and I believe you have a similar bill pending before the House.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Welch.
Mr. Taylor.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Welch, just for a point of clarification, since there is legislation pending to allow these foreign flag vessels to do precisely what your industry is doing, which is operating from one American port to another, if they were allowed to compete directly with you, would that foreign flag ship have to pay its crew subject to the American minimum wage laws?
Mr. WELCH. Under the legislation I have seen, it is not clear that they would, and of course, if they didn't we would feel like there was an advantage to them.
Mr. TAYLOR. Would they be subject to occupational safety and health laws which are designed to protect employees?
Mr. WELCH. The legislation is silent about that. I am not sure whether it would.
Mr. TAYLOR. Are your ships subject to OSHA laws now?
Ms. COLENDA. I am not sure of the answer to that question, Congressman Taylor, but I do know that our organization, ICCL members, have not taken a position on that particular piece of legislation.
Mr. TAYLOR. It is pretty simple. We have the two retired captains here. Would either of you like to comment on that? Is a foreign flag vessel operating in American waters subject to the OSHA laws?
Captain THOMPSON. No, sir, it is not. I will also tell you that an American flag vessel is subject to U.S. Coast Guard inspection also and is also not subject to OSHA inspection.
Mr. TAYLOR. Say again, please.
Captain THOMPSON. A U.S. flag vessel subject to Coast Guard inspection is not subject to OSHA inspection.
Mr. TAYLOR. OK. None of them?
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Captain THOMPSON. Those that are subject to Coast Guard inspection. There are some fish processors that are subject to OSHA inspection.
Mr. TAYLOR. If I am not mistaken, any of the vessels in the oil patch are subject to OSHA, supply boats, crew boats?
Captain THOMPSON. They are subject to Coast Guard inspection. I don't believe they are subject to OSHA.
Mr. TAYLOR. Can we have a clarification, Mr. Welch?
Mr. WELCH. There has been some uncertainty about the jurisdiction between the Coast Guard and OSHA regarding U.S. flag vessels. There is a memorandum of understanding between the Coast Guard and OSHA. It says that to the extent Coast Guard exercises safety jurisdiction over a vessel, then OSHA will not involve itself with the vessel with that respect, over that particular issue. If, however, the Coast Guard declines to exercise some type of jurisdiction over the employee safety or health on a vessel, then OSHA has the statutory authority to exercise jurisdiction in a case like that.
So the memorandum of understanding is designed to prevent duplicative action by two Federal agencies, but it is clear that in the absence of Coast Guard action, OSHA has jurisdiction that they could exercise over U.S. flag vessels.
Mr. GILCHREST. Would the gentleman yield for just a second?
Mr. TAYLOR. Sure.
Mr. GILCHREST. Captain, are there any foreign flag vessels that are not subject to Coast Guard investigation?
Captain THOMPSON. Investigation or inspection?
Mr. GILCHREST. Inspection.
Captain THOMPSON. I can't think of any. In my experience, every foreign flag vessel coming into a United States port was subject to some sort of oversight inspection, whether it be annual or, in our case, a very extensive quarterly examination.
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Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you.
Mr. TAYLOR. Neither one of us is a lawyer so there will be no nitpicking here. Mr. Welch, I am just curious, should, and I am not going to name the Members of the other body who were introducing a portion of this legislation, it is very well-known, but should it pass, how do you think the public would best be served as far as safety is concerned? And let me remind the audience today that I joined the Coast Guard almost 30 years ago. At that time they were talking about any day now Congress is going to pass a law requiring double hulls on vessels to prevent spills, any day now. That was in 1971. It did not become law until 1990, and it never would have happened, in my opinion, and I think in most people's opinions, had it not been for the Exxon Valdez disaster.
I don't think we are that far away from the same thing happening with the disaster at sea. With the huge numbers of people on these vessels and the fact that in so many instances the people they are going to be relying on in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean, when everything is going wrong—I can tell you from the little while I ran a boat for the Coast Guard, people don't break down on pretty days. They break down when things are crummy, in the middle of the night, during a storm. That is when it is going to happen. It is not going to happen on a blue sky, calm day. So you have to presume the worst.
With this in mind and given the fact that this very well could be something this body votes on, in fairness, how would the American public best be served? Should we lower our standards, if you have to compete with them, to say that our safety inspection will be similar to the IMO, that our captains can go to the Philippines to get their papers, that they can hire folks from all points of the world and literally pay them their meals, because some people of this world are so desperate that they will work for their meals still, and a stipend at the end of the month, or should we as a Nation say, sure, but you have got to live by our rules, just like an American flag does? And I will let both of y'all comment on that. Should we be dumbing down our standards or should we try to bring everyone to the same good standard and hopefully a standard that requires crewmen to be proficient in English? Because that disaster is going to happen at night, and in all probability, the guy who is going to be the one to get them out of a jam is not going to be the licensed mate. It is not going to be the master. It is not going to be the engineer with 30 years of experience. It is probably going to be the steward or the guy who cleans their room or mops up the deck who actually is going to be involved in saving people's lives when that jam occurs.
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Mr. Welch.
Mr. WELCH. Well, Mr. Taylor, our industry feels like the U.S. should lead the world in standards. We emphasize safety. We are not here advocating the diminution of the current standards of the Coast Guard or the U.S. laws, and we feel like anybody in the domestic commerce should meet those standards. The way to meet those standards and make sure that anybody in the domestic commerce meets those standards is to ensure that they fly the U.S. flag.
Ms. COLENDA. Congressman Taylor, I think that the most important thing that this committee should know about is the fact that the international standards in the passenger vessel area are stringent, and the U.S. Coast Guard as the port state control representative to IMO has worked with the international community to improve the international standards in safety, and quite frankly, in the last 5 years, they have adopted the most comprehensive safety regime dealing with passenger vessels in the history of the maritime industry.
So I am very proud of the fact that, one, this industry has its highest priority as safety. We work both as an organization and as an industry at the IMO. ICCL has nongovernmental organization status and have for about 5 or 6 years. We work with the international community to improve safety standards. We work with the Coast Guard to improve safety standards, and the Coast Guard and the cruise lines have worked to improve the standards, and I believe that the standards are, for vessels engaged in international voyages, more stringent, in many instances, than U.S. standards.
Mr. TAYLOR. I have one quick follow-up. Has your industry done a cost study of what would be the financial impact if we said you are going to live by the exact same rules, safety rules as American flag vessels?
Ms. COLENDA. In the safety area, we do live by the same safety rules.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Crew proficiency in English.
Ms. COLENDA. All of the ICCL member lines require that their crew members speak English.
Mr. TAYLOR. Well, then, why are their reports now in the two most recent incidents of passengers coming back to Congress saying that the crew couldn't talk to them, there is a communications problem?
Ms. COLENDA. I am not sure exactly what those reports are, but what I do know is when you have dedicated safety personnel on board that are required to respond to the emergency, those are the people that are required to communicate with the passengers, to lead them to their muster stations, and that those kinds of responsibilities, the safety related duties on board our vessels, they may not be the issue there. What might have happened in the case of some of the instances that you might be referring to is that a passenger might not have asked someone who had a designated safety duty on board. They might have asked the hairdresser or room steward who may not have a responsibility for safety on that vessel in question, and I don't know exactly what all the details are, but I do know that we spend, as an industry, enormous amounts of time dealing with crew training issues for response to various kinds of emergencies. We work both within the international community and with the Coast Guard to exercise different kinds of scenarios to prepare for emergencies of any kind, and that is the most important thing that a ship can do wherever it is operating.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have been very generous.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Welch, at the beginning Ms. Colenda laid out a case for the benefits to the U.S. economy of the foreign flag cruise industry, and she also laid out fees and things that they pay. Did she mention any fees that your folks don't pay, in addition to paying U.S. corporate taxes, in addition to paying U.S. FICA taxes, in addition to their employees paying income taxes?
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Mr. WELCH. We would have to pay similar fees. The only exception perhaps would be some of the fees regarding dredging, and the only reason we would not have to pay those would be if our vessels are below a certain size and don't require dredging.
Mr. DEFAZIO. On a comparable size vessel, you are not exempt from anything that they are paying?
Mr. WELCH. Presumably they may have to pay some immigration-type fees. I don't know whether you mentioned that. We would not be subject to that.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Right.
Mr. WELCH. Captain Lauridsen was reminding me that our crews, our individuals have to pay fees for their licenses and documents from the Coast Guard.
Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. And then people who are foreign certified would be perhaps paying those fees to their governments which don't exist. OK.
Ms. Colenda, I don't want to really put you on the spot here, but I have got to tell you I find this all a little bit, if I could say, schizophrenic, and let me go to the heart of this. This is a little off point, but it is kind of interesting. It is from an AP story in June, and says Royal Caribbean International Voyager of the Seas got a U.S. ZIP code. Now, the cruise ship, not the company, not the headquarters. So help me out here. And I am not sure where Royal Caribbean international voyager of the seas is flagged, it doesn't say in the story, perhaps you know but it is not flagged in the U.S. We know that, OK. So this, so far as we know, it is a foreign flag ship, and it has a U.S. ZIP Code. It is carrying, as you said, the industry as a whole carries 80 percent U.S. passengers. I don't know what the percentage is for Royal Caribbean International Voyage of the Seas, but it is probably at least 80 percent, maybe even higher.
So it is operating out of a U.S. port, it has a U.S. ZIP Code, it carries U.S. passengers, it has a corporation whose headquarters are in the United States. Yet the profits from that operation of that ship are not subject to U.S. taxes. The people who work on the ship do not pay taxes in the United States of America, but they have a ZIP Code so apparently the U.S. Postal Service delivers. You are subject to U.S. laws, and in the case of the environmental pollution there was an argument by some very prominent former lawyers that you were not, but the court found in fact you were subject, and you admitted in your testimony, said you are subject to U.S. laws there. You are voluntarily complying with criminal reporting, but now there is a case where we are seeing that there is an argument that ADA does not apply to foreign flag cruise ships.
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This is like one of those strange sort of jokes like the trunk and the elephant and the feet and the tail. What do we have here? I mean, it is puzzling to me. We have a very profitable industry that is a great industry, and it is good where it operates. It is great for Americans vacationing, but we have all these other sort of anomalies of not paying the taxes and that, but you can call the Coast Guard, you can get the mail delivered, but you don't pay the tax. These people have got to pay the taxes. I don't know if they can get ZIP Codes. I suppose they could.
But doesn't this all seem a little awkward? I mean, wouldn't it be great if these were all U.S. flag ships with U.S. crews operating out of U.S. ports carrying U.S. passengers, and then we wouldn't even have had to have the hearing.
Ms. COLENDA. On the ZIP Code, I think that that was an inaccurate report.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Oh. We will check with the Postal Service.
Ms. COLENDA. Our industry operates, Congressman DeFazio, around the world. We carry in North America primarily U.S. citizens, but we also carry non-U.S. citizens around the world. Our membership call and serve European destinations. They serve destinations around the world. So from our perspective, I think I understand your concerns, but I also think that the primary concern of the U.S. Congress that you have all expressed today at this hearing is to work with us to improve our safety performance, to ensure that all passengers on our vessels are safe and secure as possible, and that as you pointed out, our industry has proactively worked in all of these areas to adopt policies and look for and are committed to doing that in the future. So I think that our goals are exactly the same and that is to ensure that everyone who boards a cruise vessel has a safe and secure experience, and this is the highest priority of all of us here today.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I appreciate that, and as I am given the current state of international law and those things which I am not going to change, I will certainly continue to urge the industry to push the international organizations and in fact to accede to requirements of the international organizations, which I think they would be well pushed to do.
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There is this other issue which is not the subject today, and it is the issue kind of to U.S. citizens of fairness which we care a great deal as a country in terms of paying taxes, and I would suggest that if a ship operates 80 percent of the time out of a U.S. port and carries 90 percent U.S. passengers that the contribution to the economy which the American flag ships do in the same way and buying their supplies and that does not fully make up for the difference in terms of the wages that have to be paid, the taxes that have to be paid on the wages and the taxes that have to be paid on the profits, and I don't know if you are familiar with the principle of unitary taxation which is always under attack by the various and sundry industries, not just necessarily yours, but the idea would be if 80 percent of your profits are attributable to operating out of a U.S. port, then maybe you ought to be taxed on 80 percent of your profits, and the 20 percent that are attributable to operating in Europe or elsewhere could be taxed or not taxed by those nations.
But apparently somewhere back there someone established some principle when we were trying to set up Liberia because we were concerned about something after World War II with a whole bunch of surplus ships we granted all these—the U.S. created something that is now sort of becoming a problem in some ways. So I know that is kind of beyond your range as well as mine.
I am just sort of carrying on here. Thank you.
Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the gentleman. And I think the gentleman from Mississippi may have one more question.
Mr. TAYLOR. It is quick, but I do know from the cruise ship bill that back then an industry standard was that about 20 percent of the revenues on a typical cruise ship come from the gaming operations. Who checks the, for want of a better term, the honesty of your machines and your dealers on your vessels? Who regulates you?
Mr. WELCH. Mr. Taylor, we don't have any overnight cruise vessels that offer gaming. We do have some members that are inland river vessels, not overnight cruise vessels, but they are floating casinos, and they are regulated by whatever state issues their license.
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Mr. TAYLOR. This is the American vessel. Ms. Colenda.
Ms. COLENDA. Congressman Taylor, I don't know what the percentage is, but I do know that our primary mission is not engaging in—.
Mr. TAYLOR. I understand that, but again, I asked you about your kitchens, I asked you about your crews. I am curious. Who ensures the fairness of the gaming operation on a ship that is registered out of Liberia? Is it the port of call? If you are pulling out of New Orleans does the Louisiana Gaming regulate you? Is it the country of origin? Who checks out to see to it that those games are fair?
Ms. COLENDA. That is something I am going to have to provide an answer for you. I do not know the answer to that question, Congressman Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Captain, would you happen to know?
Captain THOMPSON. No, sir, I don't know.
Mr. TAYLOR. I would very much like to know. Thank you.
Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Welch, Ms. Colenda, the two former Coast Guard gentlemen, we appreciate your testimony, and the hearing, the main focus was to ensure a safe cruise, whether it was on an international vessel or a domestic ship. We appreciate the information you gave to us this afternoon, and we look forward to working with your industries to ensure that they stay viable, profitable and very safe for all their passengers. Thank you very much.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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