27 October 2023 , 13:28
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Cruise passengers were woken at 2am when water began gushing through the ceiling of a ship.
One alarmed and soggy customer said the experience aboard the Carnival Cruise ship Radiance was "absolutely terrifying". Footage of the incident shows great streams of water cascading through the ceiling into one of the ship's corridors.
They claim that it was hours before staff came to check they were alright. The passenger, named Amber, shared a couple of videos TikTok. In one she showed the water flooding the corridor, where passengers can be seen watching the watery chaos as they attempt to save their belongings from the deluge.
In a second video posted on her channel, she filmed the inside of her stateroom showing the extent of the damage to the cabin and her belongings. She captioned it: "At 2am we were woken up with water gushing into our room from the ceiling on the Carnival Radiance. Security in this video telling me I can’t record. It was absolutely terrifying. Still waiting on corporate to contact us."
The cruise line told news.com.au the flooding was caused by "a burst water line" which affected "an area of the ship that accounts for less than two percent of its staterooms". A spokesperson added that "the ship’s team members cleaned the area and the pipe was fixed". The Mirror has contacted Carnival Cruise Line for comment.
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The ship underwent a $200m (£165m) refurbishment in 2020. As well as sailing off the coast of south west USA, the vessel runs routes to Hawaii and parts of Mexico. All of its sailings leave from Long Beach in California.
The video caused a ripple of panic to spread through those watching, many of whom found the idea of waking up to discover water was flowing into the ship to be utterly terrifying.
“The way I thought this was a literal Titanic experience museum or something at first,” wrote one person. Another added: “I see that I’m going straight to the main deck, life jacket on just in case. I’m not getting stuck behind one of their gates.
One keen cruise-goer said: “I’ve been on several Carnival cruises and never had an issue but if I saw that much water I would absolutely panic.”
Of course nowadays, cruise lines have highly regulated life-saving facilities, in the extremely rare event of something going wrong and passengers needing to be evacuated. The number of lifeboats on cruise ships is determined by SOLAS, an acronym referring to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.
Each ship must have lifeboats situated along each side of the ship, with a minimum of 37.5% of the ship’s passenger capacity accommodated on each side. Most cruise ships have a far greater capacity than this however, with some accommodating around 150% of the total number of people onboard.