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An arsonist sets a fire on Deck 3 of the Frederikshavn, Denmark-bound M/S Scandinavian Star, loaded with passengers and cars at Oslo, Norway. 158 people on board die from smoke inhalation and another person dies in hospital from his injuries, bringing the total of deaths to 159.
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00:02The Scandinavian Star is an ocean-going ferry.
00:06For 19 years she carries thousands of passengers and vehicles across the seas.
00:15Until a routine crossing turns deadly for 482 people in just 45 minutes.
00:24Now, using cutting-edge computer technology, we reveal exactly what went wrong.
00:31Disasters don't just happen, they're a chain of critical events.
00:36Unravel the fateful decisions in those final seconds from disaster.
00:48Norway.
00:51Oslo.
00:54Friday, April 6th, 1990.
01:00It's the start of the Easter holidays, and after a brand new renovation,
01:04the 142-meter-long cruising ferry, Scandinavian Star,
01:08has just joined the popular route between Norway and Denmark.
01:14She's due to depart from Oslo at 7.30pm, carrying cars and 383 passengers and 99 crew.
01:23But the loading of the ship falls behind schedule.
01:29Waiting in a car on the dock with her family is Heidi Jensen.
01:32She was just 11 years old.
01:36We heard about the delay, so my mother and brother went on board, while my dad and I waited.
01:42He'd been a sailor, and I had lots of silly questions to ask him.
01:46I asked him about the lifeboats and if he had been in one, and what it was like, and I
01:52remember he said he wouldn't recommend it.
01:54I'll lock it out.
01:57Despite the delay, the passengers are looking forward to an uneventful 13-hour voyage.
02:08A restful week beckons for Jan Haasem, his pregnant wife Christine, and their one-and-a-half-year-old son,
02:14Halvor.
02:16We decided to go on Easter vacation to have some fun.
02:21We were looking forward to it, because we were expecting that summer to be very busy.
02:27Spring was in the air. There was a nice atmosphere. The weather was clear.
02:35Perfect conditions for the 12,500-ton Scandinavian Star.
02:42Built in 1971, she's a nine-deck vessel.
02:47Deck 3 carries cars and trucks in the center, and is lined around its edges by two decks of passenger
02:53cabins.
02:53But most of the passenger cabins are on Deck 5.
03:00There are three decks above these, with lounges, shops, a restaurant, bar and disco.
03:05These are put to good use on a route well-known for its duty-free party atmosphere.
03:10The bridge housing the ship's main controls is on Deck 8.
03:17On duty that night is Hugo Larsen. The passengers are in safe hands. He's been a ship's captain for 22
03:23years.
03:299.45 p.m.
03:32The mooring lines are cast off, and the Scandinavian Star finally gets underway 2 hours 15 minutes late.
03:46But on board, all is not as it should be. The interior renovation is unfinished, and there's confusion over the
03:53simplest tasks.
03:56Jan Hasen has already had a mix-up over his cabin number, and at reception, the problems continue.
04:04Then the key we were given wasn't the right one, so I had to go all the way back to
04:08reception again to get a new key.
04:11Even an 11-year-old can see that all is not right on the ship.
04:15The crew didn't understand Norwegian or English or anything, and were running about looking very stressed.
04:24But soon, the disorganisation seems little more than an inconvenience.
04:28They put the problems behind them, and begin to enjoy the restaurant, bar, and other facilities on board.
04:38I was looking forward to going to the tax-free shop and doing some shopping. It's the sort of thing
04:44girls that age enjoy.
04:49I didn't want to stay in the cabin. That was boring.
04:55It's midnight. The younger passengers, like Heidi, are in bed.
05:01Jan Hasen is restless, and leaves his wife and young son to sleep in their cabin on Deck 5.
05:09Our son Halvor was only little and needed to sleep.
05:12So I walked around the ship a bit, just observing people and situations.
05:17And it seemed as if people were settling in.
05:23The Scandinavian star is now at her cruising speed of 21 knots.
05:29The sea is calm, the night clear.
05:34The gentle motion of the ship promises a good night's sleep for the passengers already in their cabins.
05:41Yet, for some of them, their fate has already been sealed.
05:482 AM.
05:50The Scandinavian star has been underway for four and a quarter hours.
05:57Those passengers who are still awake are having a good time in the ship's bar and disco on Deck 8.
06:07But five decks below, a small fire breaks out in a corridor on Deck 3.
06:14The fire takes hold and gains strength.
06:17It creeps up the walls and along the ceilings.
06:20The passengers on the decks above sleep on or party.
06:26By 2.09 AM, the fire reaches into a stairwell and begins to climb through the ship's interior, setting fire
06:33to Deck 4 above.
06:36Still none of the passengers have any idea that beneath their feet, the fire is eating its way through the
06:41ship.
06:46And neither does Captain Larsen up on the bridge of the Scandinavian star.
06:51Despite the smoke and flames of the growing inferno, no one has yet seen the fire and raised the alarm.
07:00A group of young athletic students are enjoying the freedom of the ship on their way to a training camp.
07:05One of them is Vidas Skilingsas. He was just 14 years old.
07:11For a 14 year old, travelling without parents to Denmark, along with the rest of the gang, it was very
07:17exciting.
07:18And clearly, not having to go to bed when our parents would have told us to, was great.
07:23So we could explore the ship's facilities, like the disco and slot machines.
07:312.11 AM. Suddenly, Vidar and his friends noticed smoke pouring from a stairwell on Deck 5.
07:39We saw smoke rising from the floor below, so we went straight down to reception.
07:48Solvi Egerhardt is on duty at reception on Deck 5.
07:52Three boys came running towards me, and they were screaming, there's a fire.
07:56At first, they didn't take us seriously, but then they saw the smoke following us.
08:01I saw the smoke billowing after them. It was so thick, I could barely make them out.
08:08And I stood there thinking, we can't deal with this. We're going straight to hell.
08:14So I call the bridge, call Captain Larsen, and tell him there's a fire raging on the stern deck.
08:22It's 2.15 AM, and finally, 15 minutes after the fire has ignited, Captain Hugo Larsen gets his first warning.
08:30Simultaneously, warning alarms, which only sound on the bridge, go off as other people see smoke, and raise the alarm
08:37by hitting the emergency switches.
08:42But Captain Larsen has no idea of the scale of the fire.
08:46Every decision he makes, every turn of events over the next 30 minutes will affect the lives of the 482
08:53people on board.
08:59A fire has broken out on the passenger ship Scandinavian Star.
09:07Two of the eight decks are ablaze.
09:14And 482 people are in grave danger.
09:222.15 AM.
09:25Fire alarms go off on the bridge to warn the Captain.
09:28On most ships, this is the only place they can be heard.
09:34Captain Larsen immediately begins to close fire doors one by one using the remote controls on the bridge.
09:41This is standard safety procedure on a ship to stop the fire spreading through the interior.
09:47This course of action will turn out to be a vital clue in the investigation that follows.
09:54Next, he sounds the ship's general alarm to alert everyone on board that there is a fire.
10:00This warning signal should be audible throughout the ship.
10:072.20 AM.
10:10Three decks below the Captain, on deck five, Jan Harsom is woken by his pregnant wife.
10:16They're sharing a cabin with their one and a half year old son, Halvor.
10:21And then I see Christine leave the cabin.
10:24And I pick up Halvor on my arm and leave.
10:28The moment I get out into the corridor, I realize I've come straight from a deep sleep into something I
10:33really cannot comprehend.
10:36Because I cannot see anything.
10:38There's smoke everywhere, like a thick, thick fog.
10:42So I can't even see the walls of the corridor around me.
10:47All Yan can do is grab his son and run through the thick smoke, trusting his memory of the ship's
10:52layout.
10:53He can't even see his wife Christine, who has left the cabin just seconds before him.
11:02By now, the fire is a raging inferno.
11:05And it spits out a fireball that races across an open area from one side of the ship to the
11:09other, on deck five.
11:11Both sides are now ablaze.
11:14The fireball passes only meters from the closed door of the cabin, where 11 year old Heidi Jensen and her
11:20family are sleeping.
11:22The corridor outside is almost engulfed by the flames.
11:27I just stood there screaming and staring into a wall of flames.
11:32There was lots of crackling.
11:33It was horrible.
11:35And then my dad gave me a push in the back.
11:37And I ran.
11:39That was the worst bit.
11:41Running away from the flames.
11:43And when I got upstairs, I thought they were following me.
11:47Frightened Heidi runs straight into a group of fleeing passengers, who lead her to the relative safety of the lifeboats
11:53on deck seven.
11:56The fire is now burning on decks three, four and five.
12:01The staircase acts as a chimney, sucking the fire upwards.
12:05It continues to climb, igniting the restaurant on deck six.
12:10Coughing frantically, Jan Haase manages to find his way out into the fresh air at the back of the ship,
12:16on deck five.
12:17But his pregnant wife is missing.
12:20Leaving his son with others, Jan tries desperately to find her.
12:27I attempted to go back down the stairs again with the intention of looking for Christine.
12:34But I was met with such a mighty burst of smoke that came up the stairs that I remember the
12:39thought occurring to me.
12:41That if I do not turn around and go back up now, then Halvor would lose me as well.
12:502.24am.
12:53On the bridge of the blazing Scandinavian Star on deck eight, Captain Larsen has no accurate information on where the
13:00fire has reached or how fast it is spreading.
13:04Realizing the situation is out of control, he sets his VHF radio to the International Emergency Frequency, Channel 16.
13:12Mayday, mayday, mayday.
13:14Scandinavian Star is on fire.
13:17He sends out a mayday to any ships in the area.
13:20It's the most extreme distress signal at sea.
13:26Mayday, mayday, mayday.
13:27To make it easier to launch the light boats, Captain Larsen also cuts the engines.
13:33The Scandinavian Star is now adrift, approximately 30 kilometers from the nearest port, Vlisikil in Sweden.
13:43By 2.30am, the ventilation is off, another safety procedure.
13:49Unfortunately, this allows smoke to invade the passenger cabins all over the ship, through the door vents.
13:56The passengers trapped in the cabins are in a terrifying situation.
13:59They have nowhere to run.
14:00In desperation, those awake seek refuge from the smoke anywhere they can, in the closets, in the showers, but there
14:07is nowhere to hide.
14:09The ship's crew are in chaos.
14:11There are no clear emergency procedures for them to follow.
14:15Only a few of the crew think to put on breathing apparatus.
14:18They go into the choking smoke-filled interior, searching for survivors.
14:23One of them is Staff Captain Kirsten Hansen.
14:27He described the awful scene to the ship's receptionist, Salvi Ekerhardt.
14:33He had a terrible experience down there.
14:36One mother, he said, had sat with her back to the wall, holding her two children.
14:42They were dead.
14:43He wanted to take her up, but she said no.
14:47Let me be.
14:48I want to die with my children.
14:51And then she died.
14:552.50am.
14:5825 minutes after receiving the Mayday distress signal, the ferry Stena Saga is the first ship to arrive on the
15:04scene.
15:05One of her crew reaches for his video camera and records the sight that greets them.
15:11This is the actual video that he recorded.
15:15The waters around the blazing ship are filled with drifting lifeboats.
15:19The fire is completely out of control.
15:24The captain of the Stena Saga, Leonard Nordgren, describes the scene.
15:30We saw the whole of the stern ablaze.
15:33We could hear people screaming.
15:35And we could also hear the noise of the fire itself.
15:38A crackling sound.
15:39A bit like popcorn.
15:41The flames were 12 to 15 meters high.
15:45Other vessels join the Stena Saga.
15:48And between them, they begin the painstaking job of retrieving the drifting lightboats.
15:55It's 3.20am.
15:57Smoke fills the bridge of the Scandinavian Star where Captain Larsen stands.
16:03He tells Captain Nordgren on the Stena Saga that he must abandon ship.
16:08Nordgren knows that the captain should be the last to leave his ship.
16:12And he wants to be sure.
16:13This is a recording of their actual conversation.
16:18Stena Saga! Stena Saga!
16:20Stena Saga!
16:21Stena Saga!
16:22Stena Saga!
16:24I specifically asked him if everybody had been evacuated.
16:28And he answered in his own words.
16:30As far as I know, I think everyone has got away.
16:35But the truth is that the Scandinavian Stars captain has made a fatal mistake.
16:42More than 30 people remain.
16:44They're trapped outside at the rear of deck 5 on the ship their captain has abandoned.
16:50They can't reach the lifeboats on deck 7.
16:53The fire is blocking their way.
16:56The water is too cold to jump.
16:58Jan Haasem is trapped and desperate to protect his baby son from the inferno.
17:06Very heavy smoke rose from all the openings in the ship.
17:09The fire had an overwhelming energy to it.
17:13We heard what sounded like deep thunder rolling inside the ship.
17:20Rescue boats spot them and send lifeboats to the rear of the blazing ship.
17:24Jan escapes by climbing precariously down ropes with his young son strapped to him.
17:29At this point the rescuers finally begin to believe that all the passengers are saved.
17:365.30am.
17:39It's at this moment that the first emergency services enter the Scandinavian Star.
17:44Nine firefighters from Gothenburg, Sweden are winched onto the deck.
17:48Their leader is fire chief Ingvar Brynfors.
17:51When we made contact with the ship, the sight made our hair stand on end.
17:56It was an incredible sight.
17:58The sky was blazing red against the black horizon to the west.
18:067am.
18:07The firefighters have been on board for an hour and a half searching the ship for survivors.
18:15They reached the rear section of deck five.
18:20And are horrified to discover dead bodies everywhere.
18:24It was like the gates of hell.
18:26People were lying all over the place in the corridors.
18:29We broke down the doors so we could get into other places.
18:33And there were people lying on their beds, in the laboratories, in the showers.
18:39We counted 71 victis in there.
18:43The final victim count at the rear of deck five is 76.
18:47Nearly half the people who die succumb in this one small area.
18:53What made it so dangerous?
18:56Survivors are taken by rescue boats to ports in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
19:01People become separated in the confusion.
19:04And many don't even know if their family and loved ones are safe in a different port or left behind
19:09on the burning ship.
19:13This unique news footage shows Heidi Jensen and her family as they arrive at Sandefjord, Norway.
19:20For her father, an ex-sailor seen here carrying her younger brother, it's all too much.
19:29I saw Dad's reaction. He started crying. I think he began to take in what had happened.
19:36It had not sunk in before that.
19:39But when I saw him reacting in that way, I started thinking it was something big we had experienced.
19:45Something awful.
19:49The firefighters on the Scandinavian Star continue to scour the smoking ferry
19:54while it's towed to Liskill in Sweden.
19:57As they widen their search, the number of dead continues to rise.
20:04Jan Haasen and his young son reach land.
20:09There is still no news of his pregnant wife, Christine.
20:16It's almost too much for the human mind to cope with.
20:19Had she come out someplace else?
20:22Had she been picked up by another craft?
20:27After a week of agony, the police deliver the awful news.
20:36So Christine's casket and our little son, she was as I've mentioned pregnant.
20:42We were then brought to the churchyard in Aska where we lived and placed there.
20:49Christine Haasen leaves the same cabin as Jan at the same time, yet he lives and she dies.
20:56She's one of a staggering 158 victims that lose their lives in just 45 minutes aboard the Scandinavian Star.
21:06Now, by rewinding the events of that fateful day and by going deep into the investigation,
21:11we can reveal what truly happened.
21:14How did the fire start?
21:16Why did so many people die in one small section of the ship?
21:21Advanced computer simulation will take us, where no camera can go, into the heart of the disaster zone.
21:38A team of Scandinavian experts is assembled to investigate the disaster.
21:43Using their data, we can piece together the deadly chain of events to find out what caused this terrible tragedy.
21:52This is their actual footage of the aftermath.
21:55How does this devastating fire start?
21:59To find out, they first have to track down where it began, the point of origin.
22:05Leading the fire investigation team is the head of the Norwegian Fire Research Institute,
22:10Shell Schmidt Pedersen.
22:13What we were supposed to do is to describe the development of the fire,
22:17what started the fire, at what time it started, where it started.
22:22It's not necessarily easy to find the origin, so you have to go backwards.
22:27The whole thing is a puzzle.
22:31The investigators track the path of the fire damage through the interior of the wrecked ship.
22:35It's like playing the fire backwards, leading them back towards the ignition site, the point of origin.
22:48The trail ends in a corridor, on deck 3.
22:53They know that the answer to what starts this devastating blaze must lie in the wreckage of this corridor, seen
22:59here in their original video.
23:02They believe a pattern of burn damage marks the exact spot where the fire started.
23:07And they discover traces of linen there.
23:10They conclude that the fire was started in a pile of bedding.
23:14But what sets the bedding on fire?
23:16There was no electrical equipment, there was no heating from the chimney case, and there was no hydraulic oil system
23:25in that corridor.
23:26We found no equipment or anything that could have naturally started the fire.
23:33Could it have been set accidentally by a passenger or crew member?
23:37They discover that the passenger cabins on deck 3 were not in use.
23:42The deck should have been empty.
23:44They're mystified.
23:46The truth will only become clear when the investigators unravel all the secrets of the fatal blaze on the Scandinavian
23:53Star.
23:552am. Using forensic science, Schmidt-Peterson's team calculate that this is the earliest start time for the fire.
24:0345 minutes to disaster.
24:06The investigation now focuses on the escalation of the blaze.
24:10How did a fire in a simple pile of bedding turn into a massive blaze that sweeps through the 142
24:19meter long Scandinavian Star?
24:25A fatal fire tears through the very Scandinavian Star.
24:29It kills 158 men, women and children and is one of the worst maritime disasters in Scandinavian history.
24:40Using advanced computer graphics based on the official report, we go deep into the investigation to unravel the deadly chain
24:48of events.
24:50What started this awful fire remains unclear.
24:54Fire investigators do establish that 2am is the earliest possible moment that the fire began when a pile of bedding
25:01on deck 3 ignited.
25:03But the investigators are puzzled.
25:05How did this small fire grow into a massive blaze?
25:10To fully investigate the fire on the Scandinavian Star and unravel its secrets, they have to recreate the fatal blaze.
25:19But this time, in the laboratory.
25:22We had to make a full scale experiment and with the same type of corridor as we had on board
25:31the ship because that was important to the development of the fire.
25:36And with the same material used everything the same.
25:43The bedding fire alone would have burned out.
25:46With the ship's steel walls and fireproof asbestos lining, the fire should have had nowhere to go.
25:52And when they examine the burnt out interior, they find the asbestos boards, although buckled, have not burnt.
26:00If it isn't the lining boards themselves, what is the fuel source for the fatal blaze?
26:06Something is fueling the fire as it races through the ship. The investigators are mystified.
26:12They dig deeper.
26:15What they discover is that the decorative white finish that covers the asbestos boards has completely disappeared.
26:25But this thin lining is barely 1.6 millimeters thick, little more than the thickness of a CD.
26:32When you have a material that is 1.6 millimeters thick, that is not very much.
26:38So the first thing we did is to investigate how is it ignited?
26:42What is needed to ignite it? How much heat will it release?
26:48Schmidt-Pederson's experiments reveal that the wall lining is in fact extremely flammable.
26:54Calculations show that burning a one-meter square piece of this lining turns out to be roughly the equivalent of
27:00throwing a liter and a half of petrol into the blaze.
27:04The main fuel for the fatal fire is this thin lining.
27:08Its only job is to make the ship's interior look good, but the lining is so flammable, the fireproofing of
27:15the asbestos is useless.
27:2036 minutes to go.
27:23Based on their experiments, Schmidt-Pederson's group calculate that this corridor lining is now burning out of control.
27:32They now know that it fuels the fire, but how does it get beyond the corridor on deck 3?
27:38Why don't the ship's fireproof bulkheads and fire doors contain the blaze in the corridor?
27:43We have two bulkheads on the ship, one here and one here.
27:48And they are supposed to divide the ship into three different compartments, giving the result that a fire within one
27:58compartment should not spread to the other compartment.
28:01Fire doors allow passengers through the bulkheads and subdivide each compartment to contain a fire.
28:12But all this is useless if the fire doors are not shut.
28:19On the bridge, Captain Larsen closes fire doors by remote controls in areas where fire alarms are activated.
28:27But on the Scandinavian Star, the passenger area fire alarms are not automatic.
28:33They can only be activated manually.
28:36It means that doors are only shut in areas where people see the blaze and press the alarm button.
28:42And of course in the area where the fire started, there was no one pushing any button.
28:47So the doors were kept open.
28:5636 minutes to go.
28:58The fire passes through the open fire door and into the rest of the ship.
29:04But what puzzles investigators is that the fire seems to reach Deck 5 much more swiftly than it should.
29:10And when it gets there, it roars across the ship in a fireball.
29:15What makes it spread so rapidly through the interior?
29:20Eyewitness testimony is a key part of unravelling the chain of events.
29:2825 minutes.
29:30Kristen Blindheim stumbles out of his cabin on Deck 4 towards the nearby staircase.
29:37We were only a couple of meters from the stairwell.
29:40And there was black smoke rolling down the stairs.
29:44But hot smoke should rise, not fall.
29:49How can Kristen Blindheim see smoke travelling down the stairwell?
29:56That is a bit puzzling that the fire is going like that.
30:00So we were a bit, not surprised, but we thought that was weird.
30:09Investigators follow the trail of the smoke and fire damage downhill.
30:13It leads them to this door on Deck 3 where the passenger area joins the car deck.
30:22This photograph from the investigation shows a pattern of fire damage which leads them to believe that the door was
30:28partly open during the fire.
30:35A further clue comes from the scorched van parked right by the door.
30:41This damage can only have been caused by hot gases coming through the door and burning the vehicle.
30:47The car deck is ventilated by powerful fans designed to suck dangerous vehicle exhaust fumes out of the ship.
30:55But with the fire door to the car deck open during the blaze,
30:58these fans are literally sucking the fire through the ship.
31:03The fire starts in a corridor on Deck 3.
31:06Within 20 minutes, the airflow sucks the fire up the staircase to Deck 5.
31:12The conditions there transform it into a fireball that roars across the open space on Deck 5 to the stairwell
31:19on the other side of the ship.
31:22The smoke and flame is then sucked down this stairwell through the open fire door and into the car deck.
31:29By the time the ventilation fans are all off, 10 minutes later, it's too late.
31:36But what is still a mystery to the investigators is why 39 victims at the back of Deck 5 failed
31:43even to get out of their cabins.
31:46They focus on how the passengers are alerted.
31:51The main warning comes when they hear the ship's alarm.
31:55Surely this would have alerted the passengers.
31:59The team investigates the layout of the cabins and the positions of the alarm sirens.
32:05They discover that for 59% of the occupied cabins in the rear of Deck 5, the sound level of
32:11the alarm is less than 57 decibels.
32:15Substantially quieter than inside a Rolls-Royce travelling down a freeway.
32:21The explanation for the sleeping passengers is simple.
32:25They probably never heard the alarm. It was just too quiet.
32:31Expert fire training officer Chris Harris explains why.
32:36It starts off very loud and it starts travelling down the alleyway.
32:40And it has to turn left or right through another alleyway.
32:42And it carries on and on and on.
32:44But of course it's passing the cabin doors where the passengers are.
32:48So it's restricted again.
32:50Plus of course, the ship being a living ship, we have inbred sounds all the time.
32:56The ventilation.
32:57The engine noise.
33:00With the alarm masked by the distance, the sounds of the ventilation and the engines,
33:05the passengers in those cabins probably never even woke up.
33:13But 37 of the victims at the rear of Deck 5 are found in the corridors outside their cabins.
33:21These people must either have heard the commotion or the alarm.
33:26Why did they fail to escape?
33:29What mysterious breaks in the chain determined who lived and who died?
33:38A routine cruise on the ferry's Scandinavian Star turns deadly
33:42when a massive fire on board leaves 158 people dead.
33:48With 30 minutes left, the alarm sounds and the people in the rear of Deck 5 try to make their
33:54escape.
33:5637 bodies are found in the corridors.
33:59Jan Harsom's wife Christine is one of those victims.
34:02And yet, Jan escaping from the same cabin at the same time survives.
34:07What did they do differently?
34:10Investigators are mystified.
34:14They study the layout of the ship for clues about the mysterious death zone at the rear of Deck 5.
34:20What they find is horrifying.
34:23Fire safety engineer Professor Edgar Lear explains.
34:27The Scandinavian Star had a particular problem on Deck 5 towards the aft section.
34:32You would find, you walked along, this corridor is a dead end.
34:36And the exit is just back from the end of the corridor.
34:41On the other side of the vessel, you had a similar dead end.
34:44And then, to get out, you need to come back.
34:48Life or death lies in the instantaneous decisions people make as they struggle to escape from the confusing maze of
34:55the blazing Scandinavian Star's interior.
34:58Jan Harsom, carrying his young son Halvor, turns right when he reaches these corridors.
35:04The body of his pregnant wife Christine is found to the left.
35:07She couldn't find an exit in the maze of corridors.
35:10He turns right, she turns left.
35:14That tiny decision means he and Halvor live and Christine dies.
35:19The investigators now understand what the victims faced trying to escape from the Scandinavian Star.
35:26There is just one question about their fate that is unexplained.
35:30What actually kills them?
35:32Despite the fire's ferocity, the bodies found at the rear of Deck 5 are not burnt.
35:38So, if it isn't the flames, what is it that claims the lives of so many victims?
35:43The investigators' attention is drawn to the thick smoke generated by the burning wall linings that fill the interior.
35:51Their experiments reveal the awful fact that the smoke on the Scandinavian Star is particularly nasty.
35:57Not only does it contain carbon monoxide, but something equally deadly.
36:02Hydrogen cyanide.
36:05Hydrogen cyanide is a rapid killer.
36:07And if you know some history, you know that that was the same gas Hitler used against the Jews in
36:15the concentration camps.
36:16So, it's a real killer.
36:19When hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide are inhaled together, the combination is devastating.
36:26Of the 158 victims, all but 10 perish by breathing the deadly smoke.
36:37At some stage before death is coming, you are incapacitated, you are unable to move, and then you are trapped,
36:45and then death is coming.
36:47And all that is taking only a few minutes in this case.
36:51Within 8 to 12 minutes of the start of the fire, computer simulations suggest that the amount of toxic smoke
36:58on Deck 5 was already reaching a fatal level.
37:08We reckoned that when the captain got a message of the fire, saw this light comes up on this board,
37:15the situation was critical already for the people on board.
37:21Once the toxic smoke reaches the passenger areas, the timeline becomes less exact.
37:26The victims did not survive to record them.
37:3145 minutes after the fire starts, Schmidt-Pedersen's group calculate that the disaster is complete.
37:39The fire is out of control, the interior filled with deadly smoke.
37:45All of the victims in the cabins and the corridors have died.
37:49Wrapped in their cabins or lost in the interior.
37:54The first rescue vessel, the Stenisaga, is still 5 minutes away.
38:02But investigators remain puzzled by one thing.
38:05In an emergency situation, the crew are responsible for the safety of passengers.
38:10They are supposed to be trained to deal with emergencies.
38:14Why do they not perform better on the Scandinavian star during the disaster?
38:21The investigators check the ship's logs and registers and interview the crew.
38:27Then, they unearthed the truth.
38:31The seeds of the disaster were planted more than two weeks before the fatal fire.
38:37The Scandinavian star was rushed into service.
38:41The ship had only been in Scandinavian waters for 15 days.
38:46Before that, she'd been doing a completely different job, working as a casino cruise ship more than 5,500 kilometers
38:54away in Miami with a different crew.
38:58The ship's management had scheduled just 10 days to convert the ship from a floating casino cruise ship to a
39:05passenger ferry.
39:06And train an almost completely new crew.
39:09It's not nearly long enough, as Master Mariner Captain Emma Tiller explains.
39:14I would not consider two weeks reasonable to train the crew up on a new vessel with a new layout.
39:20I would consider somewhere in the region of six to eight weeks to be more reasonable.
39:26Not one single fire drill had been carried out.
39:30Even more disturbingly, they discovered that many of the new crew spoke neither English nor any of the Scandinavian languages.
39:38A fact that many of the passengers had spotted before the catastrophe.
39:44Later in the evening, I realized that many of the crew were Portuguese and didn't speak Norwegian.
39:50And to some extent, not English either.
39:54Confusion in the multilingual crew is a problem on board from the very start of the ferry's journey.
40:00When the catastrophe happens, the crew organization simply falls apart.
40:05As Leonard Norgren, captain of the rescue ship Stenis Saga explains.
40:12It turned out later that so much was missing, both in crew training and conditions on board, that they were
40:20absolutely not ready to go into service.
40:25The Scandinavian Star was simply an accident waiting to happen.
40:31Yet none of this explains the final key question.
40:36How did the fire start in the first place?
40:45Investigators have worked out how a fire races through the Scandinavian Star, causing catastrophe.
40:52Now they focus on how the fire started. They make a chilling discovery.
40:58It isn't the first fire on board the ship that night.
41:02Fifteen minutes before the fatal blaze, there was another fire.
41:09Kristen Blinheim witnessed it firsthand. It happens right outside his cabin.
41:16I tear the door open and see flames from the floor to high up under the ceiling.
41:21So, I dive to the bed, tear off my bedclothes and run out into the corridor and throw them over
41:27the flames and stamp on them to put the flames out.
41:31The captain is made aware of the fire, and it's promptly extinguished.
41:35Kristen is told everything is under control, but it isn't.
41:40No one checks for another fire, no alarms are sounded, no fire doors are shut.
41:45Until it's too late.
41:49Little evidence of the first fire remains, but the official report concludes that it was probably started by a naked
41:56flame.
41:57And Schmidt Pedersen's investigators failed to find any evidence that the second fire could have started accidentally.
42:06That led us to the likely conclusion that this was set on purpose with a match for a lighter.
42:18Someone set the disaster fire. It was arson.
42:22As to who the arsonist is, we may never know.
42:30When police begin to go through the backgrounds of the victims, they find that one of the Danish passengers has
42:36a police record.
42:37He had four previous convictions for arson, and police suspicion turns towards him.
42:45However, the Scandinavian Star had two sister ships when she worked in the US.
42:51All three of them had suffered major fires in the seven years preceding the disaster.
42:57In fact, only two years before the fatal voyage, there was a major incident on the Scandinavian star herself, when
43:04her engine room caught fire.
43:06The ship was heavily criticized at the time by the US accident investigators, the National Transportation Safety Board.
43:12One of their main findings, lack of a common language amongst the crew, exactly what the Scandinavian investigators conclude.
43:22A deadly chain of events leads to the disaster.
43:26A break anywhere in the chain could have prevented or reduced the catastrophe.
43:34If the crew had been better prepared, more passengers might have been evacuated.
43:40If the captain had responded effectively to the first arson attack, the second fire might have been caught sooner.
43:47If someone had been on Deck 3 to report the fire, it would never have gained such a deadly hold.
43:54If there had been smoke or heat alarms in the passenger areas, the fire could have been caught when it
43:59was still small.
44:02If all the fire doors had been shut immediately, the fire would have been trapped and unable to spread.
44:13If the alarm had been louder, more of the sleeping passengers would have been roused in the rear of Deck
44:185.
44:20If the walls had been fitted with a fireproof lining that did not produce poisonous smoke.
44:27But none of these things happened and 158 people perished.
44:40In a part of the world that prides itself on its attention to safety, this fire shakes Scandinavians to the
44:46core.
44:47It's one of their worst maritime tragedies.
44:49The official report condemns the ferry operating company and the captain.
44:56Captain Larsen and the ferry company's owner and shore manager are all given six-month jail terms for their negligence.
45:03For the survivors, the devastating effects of the tragedy remain.
45:08The dreams of 11-year-old Heidi Jensen are disturbed for years.
45:13I kept imagining that there was fire around me, around my feet. I thought there were flames everywhere.
45:20When I was in one room, I'd imagine next door was full of flames.
45:25Jan Haasem had to bring up his young son alone.
45:29He remarried 12 years later.
45:34He's since become an expert in safety at sea and devotes much of his time attempting to improve safety on
45:41ships operating across the globe.
45:45The issue of ships with inadequate safety is international.
45:50So you could be travelling in Europe, you could be in the USA, and you could at any time find
45:56yourself in the same situation.
45:59Because this problem has not been resolved.
46:03But out of the disaster come some lessons and some hope.
46:08Even if the Scandinavian Star had had better equipment, if she'd been more safely designed,
46:13the passengers would still have been at the mercy of substandard training and a crew that didn't even speak the
46:19same language.
46:20This was the lesson of the Scandinavian Star.
46:23The accident was influential in the development of new international safety codes.
46:28These place more responsibility on the owners and operators of ships to make sure their crews are properly trained and
46:35ready for emergencies.
46:37The hope is that the tragedy of the Scandinavian Star may make journeys at sea a little safer for every
46:44passenger.
47:00Everything.
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