I ran into an old friend and was talking about my new book Grounded. As I was talking about the historical shipwrecks and my incident in 1979, he said to me, “I was in a ship accident, sort of.” What? Tell me more! It turns out, he and his wife were passengers on the Carnival Tropicale, which experienced a fire in the Gulf of Mexico on its way back to Florida.
The fire knocked out the power to the ship, disabling the A/C, water and sewage, and even the ship’s stabilizers. Due to a tropical storm, passengers were tossed about in 12-foot seas. Eventually, four tugboats had to tow the boat back to port. Most accounts refer to the ordeal as “hellish”.
My friend said they were in the dining room when they smelled a powerful and acrid diesel odor, followed by the fire alarm. With hundreds of people seated for dinner and many dozens of staff serving them, a calm and controlled move from the dining hall to their assigned muster stations would be imperative.
That’s not what occurred.
People, in a panic, were pushing and running to find an exit, he described. He had to stop a couple forcibly from trampling on a young child. But he said the worst was the crew; they were just as bad if not worse than the passengers. Now these are people who constantly train on how to calmly and more efficiently deal with disasters of this type.
My friend and his wife made it back to the U.S. and now have an incredible story to tell. I asked him what percentage of passengers and crew did he think remained grounded; kept their cool and thoughtfully responded with regard for others. He said maybe 1 in 5. So on a ship with 3,000 passengers and crew, you had about 2,400 who were not mentally prepared to deal with a disaster. Which I am sure made the situation much, much worse.
If you are participating in an activity where any safety message is being given, regardless of the number of times you have heard it before (are you listening frequent flyers?), pay close attention and be prepared to remain grounded in a crisis.