P&O crew °penal door five times
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• P&O crew members moving laundry opened an internal watertight door on one of its ships at least five times on a trip last week from Zeebrugge, claim two truck drivers.
The drivers, passengers on the Pride of Bruges, sister ship of disaster ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, say a crew membei admitted to them that the door should not officially have been used.
They claim a notice on the door said it could only be opened with permission from the captain. P&O was forced to step up its safety procedures after the Zeebruge disaster last year. The drivers, Kevin Smith of Cargo Sped, and his mate Alan Shaw, had boarded the ferry for Dover.
P&O, however, calls the claims "absolute nonsense". "We test the alarms regularly for safety and five times is not unusual," it says.
It denies that truck drivers and other passengers should have been worried. "They got there safely, didn't they?" says the ferry company,