Updated Wednesday, September 10, 2010
Updated text shown in green. Outdated material is shown in strike-out letters. This post was originally published November 8, 2010
The US Navy photo on the right shows an HH - 60H Sea Hawk from USS Ronald Reagan delivering food to the powerless Carnival Splendor. Click to supersize this photo.
Tugs will slowly tow Carnival Splendor into to Ensenada to San Diego. The ship is expected to arrive in port (at the most optimistic) about 8 PM Wednesday evening (Pacific time) sometime Thursday night. A more realistic estimate puts the ship crawling into Ensenada in the late night sometime. It will be a most inglorious arrival; a relief to the passengers and an embarrassment to Carnival Cruises.
Initial reports of the fire were received by the U.S. Coast Guard at 8 AM Monday. Three Coast Guard cutters, a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft, The Dresden Express, a 965-foot box ship and member of AMVER (Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System) and a Mexican Navy patrol vessel responded to the call for help issued by Carnival Splendor.
Coast Guard Cutters Edisto, Morgenthau and Aspen were deployed to assist the crippled Carnival Splendor. USCGC Morgenthau is shadowing Carnival Splendor on it's snail-pace tow to San Diego.
USCGC Morgenthau is a 378-foot Hamilton-class High Endurance Cutter commissioned in 1969. Morgenthau's 2 12-cylinder, 3,600 horsepower Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines can carry the cutter 9,600 nautical miles at 15 knots. For this trip, however, they only need a fraction of that power. For high-speed pursuits Morgenthau is equipped with 2 Pratt & Whitney FT4A marine gas turbines capable of providing 36,000 horsepower with a maximum speed of 29 knots. Morgenthau's hangar is designed to carry one HH-65C Dolphin helicopter, which has a top speed of 175 knots and a range of 290 nautical miles.
Morgenthau has 160 crewmembers, consisting of 140 enlisted personnel and 20 officers. The cutter's homeport is Coast Guard Island in San Francisco Bay. Learn more about USCG Morgenthau here.
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier based at San Diego, has been deployed and has been using its massive air capability to provide helicopter air-drop service to the stricken ship and assist with emergency provisions. Here is a photo of an HH-60H Sea Hawk helicopter from the Reagan delivering pallets of supplies to Carnival Splendor. In this photo a crewmember from USS Ronald Reagan peers through binoculars at the Carnival Splendor sitting dead in the water. Reagan is delivering 4,500 pounds of food to Carnival Splendor and some of it is canned crab, as can be seen in this photo.
No injuries to passengers or crew have been reported, but some passengers have suffered panic and/or anxiety attacks that required medical care. Passengers are OK, but miserable. They have no air conditioning, no hot water, no Internet connection, no fancy buffets, no ice-cold cocktails. Instead they are eating canned goods and non-perishable foods and they are eating them cold. The toilets are not even working all the time. The ship is currently coming within cell phone range, so the world will soon be directly connected to the passengers for the first time since the fire.
The fire was discovered in an aft engine room and was extinguished a short time later by the ship's own fire response team, but thick, heavy smoke remained in the area and the captain issued a call for help because the ship was dead in the water and unable to navigate. There is power for lights and air conditioning, but no power in the main engines. Tonight (and last night) the Carnival Splendor is little more a barge with 4,400 very unhappy people stuck on board.
The Carnival Splendor is a Panamanian-flagged vessel (Panama's safety regulations are less strict than those of the United States. Carnival Cruises registers their ships under the Panamanian flag because the looser regulations save them a lot of money) and sailed out of Long Beach en route to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Maybe, if Carnival Cruises had spent the extra millions and took delivery of a truly safe ship, this incident may never have occurred. It is time Americans develop the good sense to be aware of flags of convenience and the potential danger the practice creates.
The dream vacation turned into a nightmare at sea. The fire control team aboard Carnival Splendor saved lives today. They should be congratulated for their professionalism. The Coast Guard also deserves serious recognition for getting three cutters and an HC-130 Hercules search-and-rescue aircraft on scene with very impressive speed. The Dresden Express deserves recognition, as does AMVER, for another successful example of the world's commercial shipping companies working in cooperation with AMVER to save lives at sea. Thanks too to the Mexican Navy for their response. Good work everybody! As this mess continues to drag on and on, more assets are being assigned to assist. The list of people to thank now includes, in addition to USS Ronald Reagan, the entire support and logistics teams at Navy Base San Diego.
For more detailed information go to: U.S. Coast Guard Response to the Carnival Splendor Incident
The dream vacation turned into a nightmare at sea. The fire control team aboard Carnival Splendor saved lives today. They should be congratulated for their professionalism. The Coast Guard also deserves serious recognition for getting three cutters and an HC-130 Hercules search-and-rescue aircraft on scene with very impressive speed. The Dresden Express deserves recognition, as does AMVER, for another successful example of the world's commercial shipping companies working in cooperation with AMVER to save lives at sea. Thanks too to the Mexican Navy for their response. Good work everybody! As this mess continues to drag on and on, more assets are being assigned to assist. The list of people to thank now includes, in addition to USS Ronald Reagan, the entire support and logistics teams at Navy Base San Diego.
For more detailed information go to: U.S. Coast Guard Response to the Carnival Splendor Incident
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