Well, until the results of the NTSB and Coast Guard investigations into what went wrong on Carnival Triumph come out, I’ve just about hit my reading and viewing limit on the topic. Without a doubt, conditions on board were probably not nice. I mean, imagine a normal city of 4,000 that experienced a sewer system failure. Now put that city on a floating platform, and I think you can get the picture. It probably wasn’t pretty on board.
I’ve been quite fortunate in my 30 cruises to not have experienced anything like Triumph, so I will try not to sound judgy. I have had a busted water pipe that flooded our cabin, another water leak from the ceiling on another ship, a broken toilet that was fixed quickly, and an electrical problem that forced us to slow down and miss a port. Oh, I almost forgot that my escargots was once delivered cold. In only one case, the flooded cabin, did I feel like the issue was anything worth writing a letter about, and that letter was dealt with to my satisfaction in short order. Of course, I did not ask for a full refund because I had to change cabins in the middle of the night, but otherwise continue to experience the cruise I expected either.
It was with that in mind that I have read or watched just about every online article and video report I can tolerate about the Carnival Triumph. Of course, the cruise pretty much sucked once things went south starting with an engine room fire. That’s about as much as you can say about it. I wasn’t there, but I expect there’s been a bit of media hype in ginning up sordid tales of woe. Most interesting to me may be the onion sandwiches. More on that in a minute. And of course, with non-functional plumbing, meeting human er…. “needs” becomes a challenge. Enter the infamous red bags. I am operating on the assumption that every cruise ship carries a supply of those bags for just such an emergency. Of course, that’s not something they are going to put in the brochure.
I have a couple of primary interests in this incident. First, I want to hear what the authorities have to say about what went technically wrong. I have no idea if cruise ship fires happen on a statistically significant basis or not. I think I would want to see hard numbers on that, including all types of ships, before I would pass judgement. My other interest in this is what Carnival and other cruise lines do to improve their crisis management practices. I don’t talk much about my airline career here, but suffice it to say that I knew what to do if a tragedy happened at my airport, at least to the point to keep things together until we were assisted by corporate crisis expertise. I would hope that improvements will be made in crisis response, both in making those affected more comfortable, and in dealing with the inevitable shore side fallout.
In short, I will continue to cruise, but I will be watching to see the results of this incident and its impact on the industry with interest. Now, for an alternative view on those onion sandwiches, check this article out courtesy of Cruisemates.com.
-MJ, February 17, 2013
Speaking from my own limited experience (having been on exactly one cruise), I suspect that MJ wasn’t too far off the mark. The news media blows things way out of proportion, as sensationalizing reports draws more readers, and consequently more advertising dollars. I often feel that real reporting died with Walter Cronkite.
I was in the Superdome for Katrina with the Louisina Army National Guard. Conditions there were very unpleasant with A/C not working and toilets not flushing once the residual water pressure was used up. The heat and humidity of south Louisiana in late August are brutal, and not being able to shower for a week under such conditions makes you miserable. But the news media reports of it being pitch black inside were false (the emergency lighting functioned as designed-it was dim, but one could see), as were the reports of murders, rapes, and other large amounts of violent crime happening. The reports of people not being fed were false, as we handed out MREs and water twice a day. There were a couple of deaths, unfortunately, but those were due to people having medical problems and our inability to evacuate everyone immediately. Our goal was to keep everyone alive and get them moved to a safer location, and we were 99.99% successful. But that wasn’t as attractive a story to put out as the lurid rumors of violence and chaos.
Note that I am confining my comments to the Superdome for the four or five days during and after Katrina’s landfall. I don’t intend for this to spin the discussion off topic, but am just trying to add my two cents’ worth based on my experience.
Look at it another way. No prison in the U.S. could get away with such conditions. Passengers were held under those conditions for 4 days. Supplies could have been dropped even if conditions prevented actually landing helicopters. A bus from Mobile to Houston instead of flying folks straight home? Absurd compensation offered?
“Look at it another way. No prison in the U.S. could get away with such conditions. Passengers were held under those conditions for 4 days. Supplies could have been dropped even if conditions prevented actually landing helicopters. A bus from Mobile to Houston instead of flying folks straight home? Absurd compensation offered?”
I’m going to try and be careful how I couch this because I’m afraid it will put into a position of sounding like I’m defending Carnival and how they handled this. Believe me, I’m not defending them. Supplies were delivered from other Carnival ships. At least one passenger, a dialysis patient, was transferred to one of the ships delivering supplies so they could get home for medical attention. Supplies of some form, including generators were helicoptered in per this article (courtesy of CNN.com…which also makes it clear how bad things were on board).
Aircraft were chartered, in addition to buses. I do not know what the differentiator was in deciding whether you flew or bussed. I would speculate that the Port of Galveston attracts a higher than average number of people that drive to the port rather than fly so many likely had cars parked there they needed to retrieve. I do not know, and have not seen any coverage indicating whether or not you had the option to fly home from Mobile if you had flown to Houston. Passengers certainly should have had that option if they did not.
As far as the compensation offered, I probably would have gone a bit higher if I were running things. Or better yet, I would have just said, passengers will receive a refund of their cruise fare and their onboard expenses, and we will work out any additional compensation with the passengers directly and left it at that. Announcing that $500 dollar number makes Carnival look a little silly if you ask me when you bounce that up against all those tent city pictures and stories about pooping in bags.
I’m sure this kind of thing is rare in the industry, but you may be doing the facts a bit of a disservice with phrases like “probably not nice.” Fetid, airless conditions, defecating in plastic bags, total darkness after sundown, no running water, a constant smell passengers compared to a porta-potty, hour long-lines for barely edible food . . . . that sounds hellish.
Any public conveyance on which people are trapped without facilities quickly become gruesome. The problem with cruises is relief is often a matter of days, not hours away.
I’ve seen his writing before. He even follows me (and I him) on Twitter. 🙂 My question is, 10 of how many cruises? And is that a statistically significant number. I don’t know, but would like to. I wonder how the industry defines “fire.” That may sound silly, but I’m serious. Would a spark and a puff of smoke count as a fire? Would an oil leak that results in a puff of smoke, but no open flames count? Again, not downplaying… doubting…. or anything else. Just curious. I wonder how the cruise industry compares to all other forms of merchant shipping? While the goal should be zero fires (I think), is that possible, or even realistically achievable. I doubt it.
There was a CNN op-ed written by an industry attorney which revealed engine room fires are frequent.
Specifically, there were 79 reported fired from 1990 to 2011, but in the last two years alone there have been ten.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/13/opinion/walker-cruise-ships/index.html