CAUSE OF FIRE

Taranaki Daily News, 12 September 1934, Page 7

CAUSE OF FIRE

MORRO CASTLE INQUIRY

INCENDIARISM SUGGESTED FUTILE FIGHT WITH BLAZE ACTING CAPTAIN’S STORY FIRE IN ANOTHER VESSEL By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Bee. 5.5 p.m. New York, Sept. 10. The acting-captain, Mr. W. F. Warms, of the Morro Castle, which caught fire off the New Jersey coast and was destroyed with a heavy death-roll, stated at the Government inquiry to-day that he suspected the blaze was started by an incendiarist, basing his belief on the fact that an incendiary attempt was made on the ship on its previous voyage. The company’s formal report on that fire, produced at the hearing, agreed with the details of Mr. Warms' story, that he found charred paper in the cargo. Mr. Warms said lightning did not strike the ship. “I sounded the general alarm a few minutes before three o’clock,” he said. Mr. Warms testified that a locker in the writing room “blew out” at the start of the fire. “I believe there was gasoline or kerosene in it,” he said. He denied reports that lifeboats left the ship without orders, and said that the panic was created by the passengers, many of whom refused to get into the lifeboats. WILD PARTIES ABOARD. Mr. Warms told of many wild parties aboard. He said he understood six young girls were so intoxicated that it was necessary to carry them from the staterooms. He added that he was continually on the bridge "after the death of Captain Willmott, as the weather was rough and visibility poor. He was informed about 2 a.m. of the fire in the library and sent the first mate to investigate. He himself never left the bridge during the entire episode. He based his judgment on the reports of his subordinates. The alarm was withheld for a full hour in the belief that the flames could be controlled.

According to the first and second mates the fire was in the library. Their efforts to extinguish it were futile. Then an explosion occurred in a locker, which must have contained petrol, kerosene or other inflammables. At once the fire was completely out of control and the crew proceeded to rescue work on their individual initiative, some’handling themselves well and, he was forced to admit, others, poorly. Captain Oscar Hernandez, chief of Havana port, declared to-day: “The Morro Castle seems to have been the work of Communists—apparently of a passenger who boarded the ship with fire-making chemicals in his baggage,”

Several officers of the Grace liner Santarita, which reached Balboa under her own steam to-day with a fire in her hold, declared: “The fire here and on the Morro Castle was the work of an international radical organisation.” Carbon monoxide gas was rushed 50 miles out to the Pacific Ocean by the canal zone tug Favourite and helped to check the fire, which was slowly working through the cargo. Captain Stevenson said that the fire was under control. Two explosions in the wreck of the Morro Castle to-day decided officials to withdraw searchers for fear of further blasts, feeling that the fire should be allowed to bum out before operations were continued.