State's ferries have enough life rafts — 98% of the time

If a fully loaded jumbo ferry were to begin to sink while crossing from Bainbridge Island to Seattle, an alarm would sound, passengers would gather at emergency stations, then the crew would escort them to the car deck.

About half of the 2,500 riders would go down inflatable slides, like those used to evacuate airliners, into life rafts or onto floating platforms.

The rest would have to wait.

Most of Washington's 28 state ferries don't have enough life rafts to safely accommodate a rare full boat. Instead, the state ferry system relies on the fact that another boat is never far away.

"All of our runs in the central Sound have a ferry traveling in the opposite direction," said Scott Davis, safety-systems manager for the Washington State Ferries. "You always have a ferry in proximity that could bring their lifesaving capacity alongside."

After a 409-foot Canadian passenger ferry carrying 101 people hit a rock and sank along the British Columbia coast early Wednesday, Davis and other marine-safety experts insisted that Washington's ferry system remains one of the safest in the world.

In a half-century of operation, no Washington ferry has sunk. No one has died as a result of an accident. There are fewer groundings and collisions than there were a decade ago. Vessels are equipped with sophisticated navigation systems. There are life jackets for everyone. Captains and crews are well trained and regularly drill for emergencies.

And as of three years ago, every boat has enough life rafts for everyone aboard on all but the busiest of its runs — only a few times a month in summer months, officials said.

In fact, after a Staten Island, N.Y., ferry slammed into a pier, killing 11 people in 2003, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the accident could have been prevented if the ferry had followed the same safety program used by Washington's ferries.

"Washington has a pretty robust safety system," said John Dwyer, chief of safety for the Coast Guard in Puget Sound.

In 1988, then-U.S. Rep. Mike Lowry tried but failed to get Congress to require Washington's ferry system to carry enough life rafts to evacuate all passengers and crew. As recently as 1999, several state ferries carried only enough rafts to hold one of every 12 passengers during a loaded ferry run because a full complement of rafts would have cost millions. The NTSB spent years pressuring the state to increase its raft capacity.

Between 2001 and 2003, the ferry system went through a safety overhaul. Now boats have enough life rafts to carry everyone on board for 98 percent of peak, summer-season runs.

Small boats have at least four 150-person life rafts. The largest boats also have four 150-person floating platforms, which can be hooked up to life rafts. Older vessels, any vessel that goes to Canada, and those making lonely runs have enough life rafts for their maximum load, which can vary based on boat size.

But that still leaves a few rare, busy runs on the largest vessels when some ferries have life rafts for only half of the riders and would have to rely on other vessels to safely evacuate the boat.

"The argument against having enough life rafts has always been that they've never had an accident, and that another boat could be there in minutes," said Tom Gowdy, who retired as safety chief for the ferry system in 1999.

"But someday there will be an accident. And it will happen in a way they didn't expect. And in those first five or 10 minutes, you could lose people."

Puget Sound's waters are cold enough to kill in 30 minutes. During one drill several years ago, Coast Guard workers simply jumped in the water, without trying to swim, to mimic what scared passengers might do. In minutes, the currents carried them a quarter-mile away.

The state and Coast Guard maintain the safety system is conservative.

"When we looked at the amount of lifesaving on board, we're looking at a whole array of features," said Dwyer, the Coast Guard's safety manager. "The ferry system demonstrated that there would be other rescue resources available."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com.

Staff reporter Jonathan Martin contributed to this report.