At 4:00 am, Jason woke me up and told me our ship wasn't moving and something seemed wrong. I was out of it and being the deep sleeper that I am, rolled over and went back to sleep.
At 6:00 am, there was a strong jolt, very intense jerks and a hard to describe grinding noise. We heard a lady in the hall screaming. There was a page over the intercom yelling "Alpha Team. Alpha Team. Alpha Team. Deck 0 Engine Control Room immediately." I had no idea what the alpha team was but knew it didn't sound good. Jason opened the cabin door and saw a short man running as fast as he could in a full fire suit with extinguisher. Several Carnival workers yelled at him "Go! Go! Go!" Jason immediately saw thick black smoke and said to me "I think our ship is on fire!"
I looked at all of the kids peacefully asleep in our adjoining cabins. I instantly had a flash back to the scene in Titanic where the mom tucked her kids in bed because they were on deck 1 and there weren't enough lifeboats. This scene always made me tear up. Here we were on deck 1 and I thought "At least we'll all die together." I know it's a morbid thought but I didn't know if we'd make it out alive. We quickly gathered our passports, birth certificates and valuable camcorder & camera in a bag. We woke up the kids and had them put on their flip flops and hoodies.
The cruise director (John Heald, who did an amazing job!) announced an apology for waking us up early and explained there was only SMOKE not a fire, which became the joke of the ship. Isn't the saying true, "When there's smoke, there's fire." He assured not to worry that we were completely safe and we would soon be on our way.
His announcement was: "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-SOME OF YOU WHOSE CABINS ARE AT THE BACK SECTION OF THE VESSEL MAY BE SMELLING SMOKE. THEREFORE THE CAPTAIN HAS ASKED ALL GUESTS WHO ARE STAYING TOWARDS THE AFT SECTION OF THE SHIP ON DECKS 1,2,6,7,8, PLEASE DRESS WARMLY AND COME TO DECK 9. IF YOU ARE ON THE MID SHIP OR FORWARD, PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. I KNOW SOME OF YOU MAY BE WORRIED OR CONCERNED SO PLEASE LET ME TELL YOU THAT WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU AND THAT ALL OF THE CREW TRAIN FOR THESE SITUATIONS."
There was a knock on the cabin and a crew member told us we needed to evacuate our cabin. We asked if we should bring our life jackets and they advised us there was no need for them. We just needed to go to the upper decks for some fresh air.
Unfortunately, we were in the "aft" section or back of the ship on deck 1 which was literally above the engine room. I didn't even think about this when I booked the cruise 2 1/2 months before. Our 2 cabins were the only 2 adjoining cabins left on the entire ship. So we walked up to Deck 9 (all elevators didn't work) and we were on deck 1 (which was 16 flights of stairs-2 flights per deck) as we walked to the upper deck every crew member we passed was wearing a life jacket. I have to admit I was a little worried. Why are they wearing them and not us? What did they know that we didn't?
We were served breakfast on Deck 9 at the Lido deck. It was extremely crowded and we grabbed a table and stood in line. For breakfast we had a large variety of cereal, yogurt, fruit but nothing hot since there was no electricity.
It didn't take much to realize that there was no power on board-no air conditioning, no lights and no working elevators. The worst part of it all was no flushing toilets. The public bathrooms on the ship quickly became full. The stench was atrocious. Having 4 little girls I was constantly taking the girls to use them.
Crew members passed large bottles of water to everyone. I was actually impressed by how calm everyone was. It was interesting to see many people hoard food. The mother bear in me felt the need to grab enough water for us as well as boxes of cereal just in case this was they ran out of food. We sat next to these hilarious women that had about 15 boxes of cereal EACH. One of the ladies was so mad because her friend ate her box of fruit loops. She said, "D*$# you #$&!<, how could you eat my fruit loops. I'm going to throw you overboard to the sharks." A Carnival crew member asked if she needed anything. Unfortunately, they couldn't find her another box of fruit loops and she was livid at her friend. It was actually entertaining. Here we are uncertain of what would happen to our ship and life and she was worried about a freakin' box of fruit loops. We were so surprised to later discover her cabin was next door to ours!
We were then told the captain decided to flood the engine room with CO2 and they would continue to update us. There wasn't anything to do but talk to other passengers and walk on the open decks. The chefs & dining room managers were paged to start making sandwiches for lunch. We were later told the good news that the smoke had begun to dissipate and the inspections showed that there are no fires. The captain ordered the ventilation shafts to be opened. At this time we were eating lunch on Deck 3 in the Golden Pearl dining room. Ava needed to go to the bathroom and by this time all public restrooms were locked to the public. They decided they should be locked because it was a health hazard to all of us. Which meant hiking down the flights of stairs to our cabin every time anyone in our family needed to go. When I came back to the dining room are I noticed SO much thick black smoke. I really couldn't believe this was happening to us! Later that afternoon we were told we could return to our staterooms because the smoke had been cleared out. The cruise director really assured us that we would soon be on our way to Puerto Vallarta and would probably be just a little late. We really had no idea what announcement would soon follow.
We then heard the cruise director tell us: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. WELL HERE I AM AGAIN AND LET ME START WITH THE GOOD NEWS. THE SHIP IS SAFE AND IN ABSOLUTELY NO JEOPARDY. YOU ARE SAFE. THERE HAVE BEEN NO INJURIES AT ALL. NOW THE NOT SO GOOD NEWS IS THAT THIS INCIDENT HAS LEFT US WITH NOW POWER. THIS MEANS WE HAVE NO LIGHTING, NO ELEVATORS, NO AIR CONDITIONING, NO PHONES AND THE TOILET SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING. OUR ENGINEERING TEAM IS WORKING HARD BUT THE SITUATION DOWNSTAIRS IS COMPLICATED TO SAY THE LEAST."
During dinner we were informed that the decision had been made to TERMINATE the cruise. They assured us Carnival would be fair to us and we would be fully refunded for this cruise. Of course my mind was racing and just hoping to get all of us off the ship at this point.
We all went to bed early for us (10:00 pm). The kids fell asleep quickly and Jason and I laid in bed listening the waves crash against our boat. We were literally like a piece of driftwood being tossed around by the waves of the ocean. It was an eerie feeling wondering and hoping that we would be rescued soon! We later found out we had drifted 60 miles before the tug boats came!
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