A fire aboard the Star Princess as it cruised the Caribbean leaves one dead and 11 injured as safety once again comes into question.

By LUISA YANEZ, CURTIS MORGAN AND AMY MARTINEZ

aemartinez@MiamiHerald.com

The cruise started in Fort Lauderdale with the promise of a week's worth of Caribbean sun and warmth. It ended amid flames and smoke that left one passenger dead and 11 injured aboard the Star Princess, a 2,600-passenger behemoth of the seas.

Metal sheets bent by the heat of the blaze and rows of windows blackened by smoke across the middle third of the ship and three floors marred the left side of the $430 million liner as it docked Thursday in Jamaica's Montego Bay.

''When we got out of our stateroom . . . there was someone lying in the hallway passed out. He was being attended to, but it was very, very scary,'' Klemens Fass, of Toronto, told The Associated Press. ``We consider ourselves very lucky,'' Lisa Gobel, of Philadelphia, told WTVJ-NBC 6 that passengers remained calm when ordered to evacuate their cabins.

The massive damage from a blaze initially reported to have been started by a smoldering cigarette is likely to focus public and political attention on cruise-ship safety.

''These are floating cities and they are not equipped with the type of support services that a city that size should have,'' said Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and a longtime critic of the cruise industry.

`DEVASTATED'

Princess Cruises said the incident marked the first time in its 40-year history that a passenger died from a fire aboard one of its ships. Coast Guard records dating back to the Star Princess' launch in 2002 show no significant safety issues.

''This was incredibly tragic. It's simply never happened before,'' said Julie Benson, spokeswoman for Princess Cruises, which is owned by the Miami-based Carnival Corp. ``We're devastated by this.''

The fire started about 3:10 a.m. as the Star Princess sailed from Grand Cayman to Montego Bay, and damaged about 100 cabins before crew members managed to extinguish it, Benson said.

One passenger died from cardiac arrest and two others suffered significant smoke inhalation but were believed to be in stable condition, Benson added. Another nine suffered minor complications from the smoke. Hospital sources in Jamaica said three passengers were admitted. Benson declined to release their names.

Richard Liffridge, the Atlanta-area passenger who died, had turned 72 on the 11th. He had been on a handful of cruises -- and always looked forward to the next one.

''He loved to travel,'' said his son, Phillip, in a telephone interview from his home in Dover, Del. ``That's what I'm having a hard time accepting: How could something that's supposed to be so much fun end up like this?''

BIRTHDAY GIFT

Liffridge's latest cruise with his wife, Vickie, and a group of friends was a sort of birthday gift for the retired Air Force man who had a second career with FEMA. But on Thursday his son was trying to figure out why his dad would suffer a fatal heart attack. He said his father did not have cardiac problems -- and certainly wasn't faint of heart.

''He had been an airman during Vietnam; he retired from FEMA and had certainly seen plenty of disasters. . . . I don't understand what happened,'' the son said.

Phillip Liffridge said he and his three sisters learned the news from his father's wife, who called from her hospital bed in Montego Bay. ''She was so upset she could hardly speak,'' Phillip Liffridge said. She was expected to return today to their home in Locust Grove, some 30 miles outside Atlanta.

The Bermuda-registered Star Princess set sail Sunday from Fort Lauderdale on a week-long tour of the Caribbean, and was due to return to Port Everglades this Sunday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it sent three investigators from Miami and two fire engineers from Washington, D.C. to Jamaica on Thursday to determine the cause of the blaze and the extent of the damage. Its records showed the Star Princess underwent its semi-annual safety training on Oct. 25, 2005 in Puerto Rico. At the time, the crew was required to go through a fire drill.

OTHER SHIP FIRES

Before Thursday's blaze, the North American cruise industry had reported at least 33 fires at sea over the past 15 years, causing some 200 injuries and six deaths. Florida-based ships were involved in 16, including Carnival Cruise Lines' Ecstasy in 1998, which began billowing smoke shortly after sailing from the Port of Miami-Dade. In 1990, nearly 160 people died in an inferno aboard the Scandinavian Star off Denmark.

The Ecstasy fire generated Congressional hearings and another round of calls for safety upgrades for cruise ships. Though the Coast Guard conducts regular inspections of ships in U.S. ports, most are registered under foreign flags and operate under international standards that differ from U.S. regulations. Smoking in cabins is permitted in many of the ships.

Cruise lines, though they initially resisted a call for cabin smoke alarms, voluntarily adopted many of the safety upgrades recommended by the NTSB in 1997 after a rash of ship fires. The industry bills itself as the safest form of transportation.

But Hall, the former NTSB chairman who is now a consultant on security and safety issues, said ships still have numerous problems. For example, he questioned whether each ship has dedicated fire crews and whether cabins have fire-retardant bedding.

WANTS HEARINGS

''I would certainly hope there would be Congressional hearings and for a change, I would hope there would be Congressional action,'' said Hall, who has been a persistent critic of the industry since 1997, when the NTSB issued an array of recommendations after a string of fires at sea. ``It's American dollars that fund the international cruise industry and we let them just waltz around our regulatory oversight.''

Hall speculated that the extent of damage in the Star Princess could indicate some sort of problem.

''Clearly, the smoke detection and suppression system, if there was one present, did not work for the fire to have gone uncontained like that,'' Hall said.

The Star Princess is supposed to be equipped with 4,000 fire detectors and 5,000 sprinkler heads, along with 6,000 miles of fire-fighting hoses, according to Coast Guard documents.

REFUNDS

A Princess company statement said the cruise had been terminated in Montego Bay. Passengers in damaged cabins were put up in area hotels and the others will remain on the ship until their flights home. The ship is safe and continues to provide full services, the statement added.

Princess said it would pay to fly the passengers home and give them a full refund and a 25 percent credit that can be used on a future trip.

Miami Herald staff writers Nicole Smith and Joe Mozingo contributed to this report.