(CNN) — It’s almost, but not quite, over for the 4,229 passengers and crew stuck on a filthy, disabled cruise ship limping back to port five days after it was due. cruiseThe Carnival Triumph was inching toward Mobile, Alabama, on Thursday afternoon, and then a tow line linking it to the lead tugboat broke.
“It looked like a whip in the water,” passenger Darryl Malone said, adding he was being told to get off the deck via an announcement broadcast throughout the ship. “They’re telling us to go inside, not look overboard because one of the towlines broke.”
Just before 3 p.m (4 p.m. ET), the line was repaired and the ship was moving again, the cruise line said.
Before the break, passengers on ship were thrilled to be nearing port. “I don’t know how much more we could have took,” passenger Larry Poret said via cell phone. Poret was aboard with his 12-year-old daughter, Rebekah, who said the ordeal has been “really, really difficult.”
Thanks to CNN cameras aboard a helicopter circling the crippled ship, Rebekah’s mother, Mary Poret, was able to see her daughter for the first time in six days.
“It’s excellent, I’m very happy,” Mary Poret said. “I’m so excited to see her and she’s so excited to see me,” Rebekah said. “I can’t wait to get back.” “We see land right now,” she said. “Yay! It’s just going to get bigger,” Mary Poret answered.
The relief was immense, especially in light of the frightening call Poret received from her daughter about 30 hours after the fire. “She was hysterical, crying hysterically. She was scared. She don’t know what was going to happen next,” Mary Poret said. “And what broke my heart the very most was her saying, ‘Mommy, I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,’ and that’s really hard to hear from your 12-year-old daughter.”
A pilot ship raced toward the Triumph as it neared Mobile Bay. Officials have given various predictions on when the ship will dock, with the window covering from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. (10 p.m. to midnight ET). Once the ship ties up at the dock, it will take up to three hours to get everyone off, Carnival Vice President of Revenue and Planning Terry Thornton said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, Coast Guard members and a Carnival team were expected to board the ship before it arrived in port to help speed efforts to get passengers off as quickly as possible, he said. Some families gathered at the Alabama Cruise Terminal, far from where the ship was originally supposed to dock in Galveston. Marissa Jenks said her family reported they had a hot meal Thursday morning and crew members were trying to clean up the ship as it neared port.
Adam Buck, a spokesman for the city of Mobile, said about 75 people were waiting for their loved ones. Family members who spoke to CNN said they had come from Kentucky, Louisiana and Texas. Some had come in as early as Wednesday but the bulk of people arrived Thursday afternoon, with each hour bringing a few more cars. No hot water, air conditioning on Triumph Girl on ship asks mom for McDonald’s Most of the anxious families couldn’t bear the thought of their relatives being on a bus for hours and had gotten hotel rooms in Mobile where the homecoming would include a long shower and a meal. Helicopters hovered over the Triumph, possibly delivering more supplies to the 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew members trapped on the ship since the fire Sunday off the coast of Mexico left the vessel listing to the side and drifting in Gulf of Mexico currents.
Larry Poret confirmed reports of dire conditions aboard the ship, saying urine and feces streamed in the halls and down walls after toilet facilities failed, soaking the mattress of a friend of his who was sleeping in a hallway. Emergency power failures caused section doors to slam shut, panicking some passengers who had no idea what was happening. “We definitely are not adequately informed,” Poret said. Boredom and stress Poret said toilets on the ship worked on and off, but were too inconsistent to trust. He said waste tipped out of some commodes and sloshed across floors as the ship listed to the side. “It runs down the walls from one floor to the next. It’s running out of somebody’s bathroom out into the hallway all the way across,” he said. Long lines for food and frequent delays were constantly aggravating, he said. “Here we are looking for hope that, hey it’s 6 o’clock, it’s going to get better,” he said. “And 6 o’clock comes and goes and all of a sudden an announcement at 8, ‘Hey, we’re running behind schedule.’ Well, no joke.” The incident aboard the ship scared Poret’s daughter and a friend taking the cruise with her, Poret said. “As soon as you get them calmed down, the electric goes out and doors start slamming shut,” he said.
During less stressful times, passengers passed the hours playing cards, walking the deck and going to see what was happening on other areas of the ship, Poret said. Passengers set up charging stations to help their fellow passengers juice up cell phones and other devices, he said. Poret and his daughter said they just wanted to sleep through the ordeal. “When we wake up I ask myself and my dad, ‘Can I go back to sleep again,’ because I want another day to pass so bad,” Rebekah said. Aboard the cruise ship? Share your story with CNN iReport A ‘floating petri dish’ Jorge Rodriguez, a doctor of internal medicine, said the sordid conditions on board make the Triumph a “floating petri dish.” “So far, there hasn’t been an outbreak of anything, but … it’s in the Gulf. It’s warm,” he said. “You don’t have sanitary conditions, so hopefully they’ll get back to shore … before anything breaks out.” Raw sewage is a major health risk, Rodriguez said, but respiratory infections could also spread quickly. Spoiling food could unleash E. coli bacteria, salmonella and other types of food poisoning. “People on that cruise need to be careful for the next day to couple of weeks,” he said. “They may have contracted something that’s just sort of festering under the surface and won’t come to full-blown infectious status for the next couple of weeks.” Carnival promises an army of about 200 employees will take care of its passengers once they clear customs.
Passengers can board buses to Galveston, where the cruise originated, or to nearby Houston, or spend the night in a hotel in New Orleans. Carnival said it has reserved and arranged approximately 100 motor coaches, more than 1,500 New Orleans hotel rooms, multiple charter flights from New Orleans to Houston on Friday and transportation from Houston to the Port of Galveston so that guests may retrieve their cars if they drove to the port. Carnival officials had initially planned to tow the ship to a Mexican port, but after Gulf currents pushed it farther north before tugboats could take control, and considering that 900 of the passengers do not have passports, the company decided to take the Triumph to Mobile instead.
Compensation for travelers Thornton said conditions had improved on the ship, which he said is in “excellent shape” and would be “fully provisioned” by the time it reaches port. The cruise line said it would give each passenger $500, a free flight home, a full refund for their trip and for most expenses on board, as well as a credit for another cruise. Brent Nutt, whose wife, Bethany, is on the ship, said it’s not worth it. “First of all, we only paid $350 for her to go on this cruise. Her safety and her well-being are worth a whole lot more than $350,” he said. And the free stuff? “I promise you, none of my family members that are on there will probably ever, ever take another cruise,” he said.
The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation into the cause of the engine room fire. Because the Carnival Triumph is a Bahamian-flagged vessel, the Bahamas Maritime Authority is the primary investigative agency.