Fire on ‘Carnival Splendor’ leaves 4,500 stranded in Pacific

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LOS ANGELES (GaeaTimes.com) — More than 4,500 people on board Carnival Splendor are stranded with minimal power in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico. An engine room fire has disrupted all the basic services on that cruise ship and The ship has been operating on auxiliary generators and engineers have been unable to restore additional power to the vessel.

The fire erupted in the aft engine room around 6:00 am Monday (1400 GMT), and was extinguished with no injuries to guests or crew — but the ship, carrying 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew, was left without key services. Currently several key hotel systems, including air conditioning, hot food service, and telephones are not available. Although last night ship’s engineers were able to restore toilet service to all cabins and public bathrooms, as well as cold running water.

The company President Gerry Cahill has commented -

Conditions on board the ship are very challenging and we sincerely apologize for the discomfort and inconvenience our guests are currently enduring.

The 113,000-ton ship, which first entered service in July 2008, was on a seven-day Mexican Riviera cruise which started Sunday in Long Beach, California.

The US Navy announced that the USS Ronald Reagan had been diverted to help the stricken cruise liner at the request of the US Coast Guard. Two tugboats were expected to reach the ship around midday (2000 GMT) on Tuesday to tow it to Ensenada, Mexico.