On Thursday morning, a fire broke out in the funnel of the cruise ship Carnival Freedom while it was docked in Grand Turk.
The Carnival Freedom, based in Port Canaveral, was carrying about 2,500 passengers and a crew of about 1,100, according to Matt Lupoli, senior manager of public relations at Carnival Cruise Line. No injuries were reported.
In a statement from Lupoli, Carnival said: “The Carnival Freedom emergency response team quickly activated and extinguished a fire in the ship’s funnel while the ship was in Grand Turk. All guests and crew are safe and the ship’s guests have been checked by local authorities. authorities. to go ashore. We continue to assess the situation.”
Carnival Freedom departed Port Canaveral on Monday for a five-day cruise.
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Among the passengers on the ship were Jenny Fleming and her mother, Carol Reich, both from Palm Bay. Fleming said they were among the first to report the fire.
“Mom and I were sitting on the balcony drinking coffee while we were docking, and some wonderful people at the (Carnival) Mardi Gras next door start yelling at us that there’s a fire,” Fleming said. “Mom rushes in and calls 911, and apparently we were the first to report it.”
Fleming said they reported the fire at 7:30 a.m. Everyone was told to report to their assembly stations for 20 to 30 minutes while the Carnival crew assessed the situation. Passengers were allowed to land at 8:40 am.
“The entire crew was great at keeping us informed and making sure we knew where to go,” said Fleming. “Many passengers were upset and there was chaos at first. But once everyone got to the assembly station, order was restored.”
Katie Bushnell of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was on the Mardi Gras, another Port-Canaveral vessel docked next to Carnival Freedom in Grand Turk, and witnessed the incident.
“We woke up around 7:30 am and I heard people screaming outside our room,” said Bushnell, who was on the cruise with some family members. “I go on our balcony and people say ‘the ship is on fire!’ I look up and see black smoke coming out of a ship, and I thought it belonged to us.”
Soon “we realize that people were screaming from our ship to the other ship. I try to get a good look at the other ship, and sure enough, we see their ship on fire. It raged and got bigger and bigger. I was so scared because it was just getting started and the staff was just getting warned. So we watched it and tried to warn others on their balcony on the other ship.”
In a Facebook post describing the fire, Bushnell wrote: “The firefighters on the Freedom have taken control and it’s all right now. Thank God. It was a crazy thing to watch, and I was really scared for the passengers on the Freedom. The wind was blowing really hard and the fire seemed to get bigger and bigger. I wasn’t sure how they would contain it. But the staff is very well trained.”
A cruise ship funnel generally serves as a chimney to lift emissions above the deck, i.e. away from passengers and crew.
Grand Turk is part of the Turks and Caicos Islands, located north of the island of Hispaniola, the island that includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Finch Walker is a Breaking News Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or [email protected]. Twitter: †finchwalker
Dave Berman is a business editor at FLORIDA TODAY† Contact Berman at [email protected]. Twitter: @bydaveberman†
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Carnival Freedom off Port Canaveral catches fire while docked in Grand Turk
