Passengers relive the shock of waking up to flames at sea
Vanessa Blum
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Chicago Tribune
___________
One Princess Cruises passenger said he initially thought the fire alarm was his wake-up call for an early morning golf excursion.
Another said she thought that her husband had accidentally hit the remote and turned on the television.
But they and their fellow 2,688 passengers aboard the Star Princess quickly realized that the luxury cruise liner was on fire. They threw life vests on over their pajamas, grabbed their passports and fled through smoky hallways to their emergency stations where they remained for the next seven hours.
One man was killed and 11 people were injured in the blaze, which tore through more than 100 cabins before being extinguished. Star Princess passengers returning home to Florida on Friday described the terror just a day earlier of waking up to fire alarms, smelling smoke, and seeing lifeboats readied to abandon ship
"I thought I wasn't going to make it," said Andrea Isser, 22, a teacher from Delray Beach.Jerry Levy of Orlando looked out his 10th floor cabin window and saw flaming pieces of fiberglass and plastic streaming down like embers of molten lava.
Mar 25, 2006
Vanessa Blum
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Chicago Tribune
___________
One Princess Cruises passenger said he initially thought the fire alarm was his wake-up call for an early morning golf excursion.
Another said she thought that her husband had accidentally hit the remote and turned on the television.
But they and their fellow 2,688 passengers aboard the Star Princess quickly realized that the luxury cruise liner was on fire. They threw life vests on over their pajamas, grabbed their passports and fled through smoky hallways to their emergency stations where they remained for the next seven hours.
One man was killed and 11 people were injured in the blaze, which tore through more than 100 cabins before being extinguished. Star Princess passengers returning home to Florida on Friday described the terror just a day earlier of waking up to fire alarms, smelling smoke, and seeing lifeboats readied to abandon ship
"I thought I wasn't going to make it," said Andrea Isser, 22, a teacher from Delray Beach.Jerry Levy of Orlando looked out his 10th floor cabin window and saw flaming pieces of fiberglass and plastic streaming down like embers of molten lava.
Mar 25, 2006
