Collinsville couple headed home after leaving disabled cruise ship Triumph
BY RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer
Friday, February 15, 2013
2/15/13 at 4:00 PM
After five days of eating vegetable sandwiches and using the bathroom in baggies, Carla Brown of Collinsville, said she’s looking forward to some normalcy.
“A hot shower would be really, really nice – and a good night’s sleep,” Brown, sitting in a bus in New Orleans, said Friday in a telephone interview.
Brown and husband, Kenny, were among the roughly 4,200 people aboard Carnival cruise ship Triumph, which was pulled ashore by tugboats Thursday in Mobile, Ala. Passengers on the 14-story vessel endured five days of sleep deprivation, food shortages and hygienic humiliation after an engine-room blaze left the ship disabled for five days in the Gulf of Mexico.
The couple was expected back in Oklahoma about suppertime Saturday.
“The staff did everything they could have done,” Carla said.
Brown, who works for Collinsville-based Verdigris Valley Electric Cooperative, was on the cruise with other relatives, as well as with the family of another VVEC employee, Darrell White. She said the couple’s biggest complaint was Carnival’s delay in deciding a course of action after the fire.
“I believe it was probably about 10 hours before they ever ordered tugboats,” Carla said.
Read more of this story in Saturday's Tulsa World.
Associated Images:
The cruise ship Carnival Triumph is towed into Mobile Bay near Dauphin Island, Ala., Thursday. DAVE MARTIN/AP Photo
This undated photo provided by passenger Don Hoggatt, of Dallas, shows covered urinals and bagged trash cans for passengers to use in one of the bathrooms aboard the Carnival Triumph cruise ship which became disabled after an engine-room fire left the ship powerless off Mexico last weekend. DON HOGGATT/AP Photo
|
