No electricity, no air conditioning in tropical heat: after a fire on board, the comfortable cruise on the “Costa Allegra” becomes a horror trip for the passengers. The ship is unable to maneuver and is now being towed away.
The dream trip in the Indian Ocean has turned into a towing tour without electricity through pirate territory. Helicopters are supplying the cruise ship “Costa Allegra” with supplies following its accident in the Pacific, as a German representative of the shipping company Costa Crociere said on Tuesday evening. The ship will now be towed to the Seychelles, where it is expected to arrive on Thursday morning after a two-day delay.
The accident involving the “Costa Allegra” once again affects a cruise ship from the same Italian shipping company that owned the ill-fated “Costa Concordia”. The fire in the engine room of the “Costa Allegra” did not injure anyone on its way from Madagascar to the Seychelles on Monday. The more than 1000 people then traveled through the tropics without air conditioning or a functioning power supply.
Their 26-day voyage was to take them from Mauritius via Madagascar through the Suez Canal to Savona in Italy. Now it ends in the Seychelles, from where the vacationers are to fly home immediately.
A French deep-sea fishing trawler and two tugs are to tow the unmaneuverable “Costa Allegra” to the Seychelles main island of Mahé in the Indian Ocean. The tugboats had reached the Italian ship and could now take it there more quickly, the Genoa-based shipping company Costa Crociere announced. Of the 1049 people on board, 636 are passengers from 25 countries. There are 38 Germans, 90 Swiss, 97 Austrians, 127 French and 135 Italians.
Sven Dreeßen, Professor of Maritime Traffic Safety: “If you take two weeks as the duration of a cruise, a vacationer would have to make 164,000 trips to die in a shipping accident, statistically speaking.”
According to a report by the Austrian news agency APA, the public prosecutor’s office in the Italian port city of Genoa has now launched an investigation to clarify the causes of the fire in the engine room. The captain of the “Costa Allegra” had ruled out that the fire could have been started deliberately.
The Italian consumer protection association Codacons now wants the shipping company to compensate the passengers. The passengers suffered considerable damage due to fear and stress caused by the fire.
Originally, the “Costa Allegra”, which was unseaworthy after a fire in the engine room, was to be towed to the nearby island of Desroches. However, an inspection had shown that the safety conditions for docking and disembarking were not met. The accommodation on the island was also inadequate, the shipping company explained.
Meanwhile, the people on board are taken care of: helicopters bring food, flashlights and other necessary equipment for the “Costa Allegra”. The weather conditions are good. “At night, it will be best for passengers to stay outside on deck,” Giorgio Moretti from the shipping company advised passengers. Because off the Seychelles, heat of up to 30 degrees is on the cards.
Relatives cannot find out exactly where the “Allegra” is at the moment: The web camera, which continuously transmits images from on board on the shipping company’s website, is down, as is the route transmission. The “Costa Allegra” had requested help on Monday while sailing from Madagascar towards the Seychelles.
“Everyone is fine, nothing has happened,” said the spokesman for the German subsidiary Costa Cruises, Werner Claasen, on Tuesday. All family members of the passengers have been informed. According to Claasen, the part of the machine that produces the electricity for the ship was affected by the fire. The fire was quickly brought under control. “The fire did not spread to any other part of the ship, there were no injuries or casualties,” it said. The on-board equipment is in emergency mode. The cause of the fire was initially unclear.
The shipping company has been sailing in difficult waters for around six weeks:
On the night of January 14, the ship “Costa Concordia” ran aground on a rock off the coast of Tuscany. The cause was apparently a maneuvering error by the captain. It is likely that 32 people died in the disaster. The salvage work is still ongoing – and divers keep finding bodies in the wreck.
The “Costa Allegra”, which was converted in 1992 and is therefore older than the “Concordia”, which was wrecked off the island of Giglio, is considerably smaller at 28,600 tons.
The share price of Costa’s parent company Carnival was down almost one percent in pre-market trading in New York on Tuesday. The day before, the accident had startled investors and caused the share price to fall by 2 percent. However, the shares of the world’s largest cruise shipping company had recovered by the evening and left trading almost unchanged.