Relieved passengers from a stricken luxury US cruise ship finally stepped back on dry land, voicing joy at the end of a four-day ordeal which one described as a “vacation from hell”. The 3,299 mostly American passengers on board the Carnival Splendor, left adrift in the Pacific after an engine fire on Monday, streamed off the ship in San Diego where it arrived after being towed by tugs for two days.
Some praised the way the 1,167 crew on board dealt with the crisis, but for many it was a nightmare as the vessel was left without hot water or hot food, while many of the toilets did not work for the first day of the emergency.
“It was putrid like a pit toilet,” Greg Parish, 48, said, saying it was his first and last cruise. “This is a vacation from hell... I think I’m pretty done with this cruise business.”
“It was awful, it was sewage,” added 41-year-old Maria Azila, on her fifth cruise to celebrate her mother’s 75th birthday, describing the smell on the ship. “The food was bad,” she added.
The 113,000-ton ship was on a seven-day Mexican Riviera cruise which started Sunday in Long Beach, California, but only made it some 300 kilometres south of San Diego, off the Mexican coast, when the blaze erupted early on Monday.
The vessel spent over a day adrift, before ocean-going tugs reached it on Tuesday and began the two-day limp back to US soil which finally ended Thursday with emotional reunions with loved ones in San Diego.
Some passengers had praise for the hundreds of staff on board the liner, who helped organise activities ranging from card games to musical singalongs to while away the time.
“The crew did a great job,” said Barbara Levant from British Columbia, describing how staff slept under the tables in the dining room because their quarters – at the bottom of the ship – were too hot without air conditioning.
They also formed human chains to carry food up several floors, since the elevators were not working.
For some, the worst moment was when the fire first broke out, waking passengers on Monday morning.
“We woke up at 6 a.m. to the smell of smoke. I opened the hallway door and it was filled with smoke,” said Ms Parish, echoing other’ accounts that passengers were only told there was smoke, not a full-blown engine fire.
“I felt like they were kind of leading us on and lying to us. They weren’t telling us what was really happening. The whole area was filled with smoke and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is going on.”
Ms Azila said she was afraid of drug-runners or pirates boarding the ship while it was adrift, before the tugs and the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier came to the rescue.
“I was scared. I was afraid for the 32 hours we were there, for sure,” she added, describing the moment the US Navy ship arrived, carrying some £4,500 of groceries including bottled water, Spam and Pop Tarts.