TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums Afloat Carnival Triumph without propulsion power

After suffering an engine fire, Carnival Triumph is dead in the water and will have to be towed to port. Another black eye for Carnival..

It is hard to understand why it takes so long to offer relief to the Passengers on the ship.You would think the would have a contingent plan it place for these emergencies.
Delray

Sorry, like what? It would be extremely dangerous to get them off the ship and they have brought supplies from other ships, at least twice.

How about redundant systems or something to flush toilets and provide water?

While I realize its unlikely this will happen on a cruise, just the thought of it is enough to keep me far away - I had little desire before anyway, but after the past couple of stories like this, there's no way I'd go.

Ditto!!!

Redundant systems?? This really is just such an unusual situation, it just wouldn't make sense..

I haven't read enough about it, but wasn't it a fire in the engine room? Shouldn't there be multiple engines?

Seems to me that a ship that size should have some way of running basic systems even if there is no propulsion.

These ships are remarkable and these issues relatively remote -- I recently took the super tour of one including cool spots like engine control room - laundry - photo lab, back stage, galley, freezer areas, hospital/morgue, exhaust stack. I have remarkable respect for the ship and crews.

That said, I think they might rethink an emergency plumbing plan by literally having an area where they can configure as a "real life poop deck" --- a latrine where a pump can bring seawater up and continuously flush a set of "private stalls" constructed on the deckplate like the old roman public bathrooms. The cleanup would be minimal). Also, I read they airlifted a generator which allowed the restoration of hot meal prep ---- might want to add that emergency generator to the design to have that on board.

I can only imagine if sees were rough and they were adrift.

Most of these boats are diesel/electrics. There are multiple diesels to generate electricty for the props --- why does one engine fire totally disable the propulsion of the ship. You would hope they could reconfigure/rewire toget something out of the other prop (couple knots/stabilization). An open sea Atlantic or Pacific crossing could be even more sporty than this episode.

Hopefully cruise prices will be alittle lower as a result.

It makes me wonder why out of all the Carnival brands (Carnival, Costa, Cunard, Holland America, P&O, Seabourne, Princess and others)why do Carnival & Costa have less safety success.

The problem with the 'poop deck', as you say, is that legally, they have to treat sewage before it goes into the water. As far as the generators, I guess there may be some talk of separating hte area where the generators are now, so that one fire cannot take them all out. I spent a couple of hours last night watching CNN, watching the ship come in and some of the passengers come off and I have to say, the ones who talked to the news media looked remarkably well and in remarkably good spirits.

Carol You make some good points,but it took them 5 days to get to passengers to shore. It is rare it happens but there have been more than just this incident.
Delray

True that it took five days but I just don't know the answer. Apparently, based on what I read on Cruise Critic, ships built after 2010 are required to have redundant power systems, that would avoid a situation like this. Those regs don't apply to older ships though.

I think once at a certain point offshore, one onlyhas to have a macerator to offload the waste. I know the boat I was on actually treats the water to drinkable before turningit back to the ocean.

I would declare this an emergency and if brought to task, pay the fine.

I'm sure there will be some innovative solutions developed to prevent the PR of "bags".

Despite this, I'd take a free cruise to anywhere warm RIGHT NOW!

What if this had been a nude cruise --- that would have doubled the coverage

Why could they not bring another cruise ship and tender the passengers and crew to it?
What if this had been a major fire, what would happen then?
Sounds very scary.
Ellen

Ellen--Have you ever tendered from a cruise ship? It can be a very dangerous business, in regular circumstances, when the ship has thruster and stabilizer power to keep it steady. This ship had neither of these. The passengers were in no immediate danger and it was much safer to keep them onboard, versus risking a very dangerous tendering exercise. Five people recently died during a routine tendering. Of course, there are no cruise ships just 'hanging around' either to transfer them to.

IF the ship was in danger of sinking, certainly they would have put them in tenders, but not in this circumstance.

If it became a question of a need based on safety to evacuate the ship, then I think that the life boats would be used to evacuate. Obviously, that would not make anyone happy - if people complained about being trapped on the ship, let them be on a life boat for hours, let alone a day or two. The idea of tendering cruise ship pax between ships in open water (and unless you had access to land based tenders then the life boats would be used) would scare the daylights out of anyone and I think that you would evacuate into lifeboats before trying the tendering. All dependent on particular cicumstances, of course.

I don't know, it's one thing to macerate and dump a 15 gallon holding tank far enough off shore but when you are talking about what 3,000 people would generate I'm not sure there's a way to justify it dumping all that. There may well be some innovative solutions that come out of this but for now the bags serve their purpose when needed and I think most people would be able to handle it if they had a situation where using them was necessary. Hopefully nothing like this will happen again anytime soon! I'm happy everyone is finally back on land and wish them the best.

No - I have never tendered - have only been on one cruise and that was enough.
Thanks for the explanation - I was curious.
Ellen

Given I have been away from the board to a short while; I would like to weigh in on this event.

Not surprisingly, as with most issues of this sort, the Media uses it as an opportunity to dispense primarily negative reporting. CruiseOne, nationwide, had several passengers on the vessel and all report the problems were not quite as intense as reported in most outlets. Yes, the majority of the toilets were not operating but some were. Had input from many they were never offered an "onion" sandwich and there was plenty of food. In fact, one said they had lobster two days in a row.

With respect to tendering; that would be a liability far too great for any cruise line to undertake for safety purposes. The question has come up as to why they did not take passengers back to Mexico and the answer is over 1000 passengers had no passports. You cannot fly from a foreign country back to the States without a passport. (Makes the argument for everyone to get their passport.)

Finally, given four incidents with the Carnival brand in the last couple of years, I felt personally they made a conserted effort to make clients whole, all of wich were not required. Full reimbursement, absorbing all on board accounts, future cruise credit equal to the amount paid for the cruise, $500 cash and transportation back to the home port.

I'm sure some will disagree with me but wanted to add some thoughts to the situation.