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Stranded cruise ship evacuated
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02/15/13 10:56 AM ET
Passengers have been safely removed from a stranded Carnival Cruise Lines ship after it reached shore in Alabama in the early hours of Friday morning, according to company officials.
The ship, named the Carnival Triumph, was stranded at sea since it lost power on Sunday after one of its engines caught fire. The disabled cruise liner was towed by tugboats to Mobile, Ala.
In a series of tweets on Thursday night and Friday morning, Carnival said it had removed all 4,000 people who had been on the boat for more than a week.
"All guests have now disembarked the Carnival Triumph," the company tweeted at 12:45 a.m. on Friday.
No injuries were been reported.
Carnival said the several hour delay in disembarking passengers was due to the ship's limited number of elevators available after its loss of power.
Passengers on board the Triumph complained to media outlets of squalid conditions on the ship, which they attributed to bathrooms malfunctioning and food spoiling without refrigeration.
Carnival said its CEO, Gerry Cahill, boarded the Triumph when it reached the Mobile port to personally apologize to passengers.
"I want to again apologize to our guests and their friends and family," Cahill said in a news conference Thursday evening. "The situation has been incredibly difficult and we're sorry for what happened. Our company was founded on the idea of providing great vacations to fun-loving Americans and clearly we failed on this cruise."
Carnival has promised passengers refunds of their ticket purchases and credits for future cruises.
At least one lawmaker, Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), has called for a congressional investigation into the disabled Carnival cruise liner.
Matsui sponsored legislation passed by Congress in 2011 to beef up safety requirements for passengers on cruise ships.
She said Thursday that the Triumph's debilitation showed the need for more federal regulation of the cruise ship industry.
"The recent catastrophe with Triumph, the Carnival cruise ship, is just one more mishap for an industry that touts itself as providing safe, family-friendly vacations," Matsui said in a statement provided to The Hill by her office.
"While I am glad that no injuries have been reported, the stranding of almost 4,000 people for four days is anything but safe," she continued. "The power, food and sewage issues reported by passengers are disturbing and raise concerns that these enormous ships are not properly prepared for emergency situations."
