The passengers on the doomed Carnival Triumph still have several hours on board the floating petri dish. By all accounts it is the cruise from hell. A fire took out the electricity and much of the plumbing. The stabilizers aren’t working properly, so the ship’s been lurching through the ocean. There are reports of sewage sloshing out of the stopped up toilets, and passengers being forced to use plastic bio-hazard bags as bathrooms. What a disgusting nightmare. If that wasn’t all bad enough, the tow line broke, extending the horror for hours.
Via The Daily Mail here are some of the photos. (There are many more at the link.)
Here’s the deck of the ship that’s turned into a make-shift tent city. Passengers are sleeping out there because it reeks so badly inside.
Here’s a waste bag waiting to be disposed of by the staff.
The lines for food are long, as you can see in this photo.
This one shows the filthy floors.
Some passengers have reported illnesses due to the unsanitary conditions, and once they dock in Mobile, Alabama they face several more hours of travel and a possible overnight stay in New Orleans. The cruise line will refund the price of this cruise, give each passenger $500 as well as a voucher for a future cruise. I wonder how many of them will want to step foot on another Carnival cruise ship again.
Oddly enough, Carnival’s investors haven’t fared that badly (so far) even in the middle of this PR debacle.
Update Friday 2/15: The ship is now safely in port and the passengers are all on their way home. I should add that many passengers reported that the crew on the ship did a wonderful job making things as bearable as possible during this ordeal.
Cruise from Hell?
Hardly.
Yes, passengers have had to camp out in tents on the upper decks, eat sandwiches and drink bottled water. Yes, they’ve had to use bio-bags as toilets, which the crew has picked up and disposed of as soon as they are used. Yes, they have not been able to exist in air-congitioned comfort.
Although it’s not the pleasure cruise they were all expecting, they are hardly any more put out than if they had gone on a camping trip for the week… live in tents, eat cold food, use a porta-potty.
They are getting their money back, a $500 bonus is being given to each passenger, and a free trip anytime in the future.
Cruise from Hell?
Not even close.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Sorry, but this is the stuff of my nightmares. You can walk away from a camp ground. You can’t walk away from the middle of the ocean. Plus, this was supposed to be a four day cruise. Now they’ve all lost an extra week from work. I doubt $500 can make up for that for most of them. It’s just gross.
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They should only show the series, “Hoarders” on TV so they think they’ve got primo digs in comparison.
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On second thought, just show them how our troops live like out in the no-man’s lands in Afghanistan. That’s a better perspective.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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LC I agree, the sloshing alone is quite sickening, let alone the additional filth and specter of disease. Carnival obviously had no plan B for this type of condition!
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I guess my question(s) deal more along the lines of – why weren’t evacuation procedures implemented or followed up on? Sounds like they had reasonable weather, which is good, but what if bad weather / high seas did present itself? What would they have done then? Without the ability to manuever, the ship would be in a perilous situation.
At the moment, I’m leaning towards the aspect that either it wasn’t as bad as it’s being described or someone was too cheap to get the passengers to safety. (While both can be true, knowing that a ship without power is a danger in and of itself, I’m inclined to believe it’s more the latter.)
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I heard that evacuating the ship in the middle of the ocean would have been really dangerous. Plus, the number of people they would have had to evacuate was enormous, not that many ships have the capacity for 4000 people. A friend of mine was on a cruise and at one of the ports the ship they were on was next to the Triumph. She said it dwarfed the ship she was on.
You couldn’t pay me to take a cruise, even before this. Too much humanity cramped into a small space with no way to escape. No thanks.
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I served on an aircraft carrier for three years, the USS Midway, CVA-41. It had 4,000 officers and men.
At 1,000 feet long, it was a bit smaller than this cruise ship. The only time I ever saw more than 25-30 people at one time was in the mess hall, where there was maybe 80-100.
A ship that size than accomodate 4,000 people easily. If you’ve never been on one, you don’t have a clue.
This event has been hyped beyond all reason. Those people were never in any real danger. Had it actually been a serious mishap, there would have been all manner of boats and copters to handle a rescue.
Nobody even got sick enough to warrant a helicopter evacuation. And there’s always a few poeple who will claim some horrid illness so they can get a few lawyers and sue for a pile of money.
One can only imagine how todays media would have reacted to the Titanic, which was a real disaster, not just some mishap where no one got harmed, or drowned, or frozen to death. Nobody starved or died of thirst, Most of the passengers were bored through the whole thing.
Seems to me it all happened on a slow news day.
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