In this handout from the U.S. Coast Guard, the cruise ship Carnival Triumph sits idle February 11, 2013 in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the Coast Guard, the ship lost propulsion power February 10, after a fire broke out in the engine room. (Photo by Paul McConnell/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)
Reporting Steve Miller
(CBS) – Three days of fun — and five days of being stuck out in the ocean.
That’s how Sandeep Berry of Evanston describes the past several days on the sewage-soaked Carnival cruise ship Triumph.
She said passengers have had to use orange biohazard bags as toilets. Most passengers had a hard time staying clean.
“Luckily for us, the floor we’re on and the section we’re in, our toilet started working after three days. Our shower has been working,” she tells WBBM Newsradio’s Steve Miller.
“But — to go into detail — we’ve had to use the sink to go to the bathroom and to go number-two in the bags,” she adds.
Berry says the ship has been listing so much that she and her mother saw an older man fall and break ribs and a foot.
She says when another ship tried to transfer food onto the Triumph, the waves and the winds were so bad two windows were broken.
At first, she says, they let people take whatever food they wanted. But people started hoarding food, and the staff started putting food on people’s plates so everybody would get some.
“It’s been a nightmare,” she said.
Chicago’s Rian Tipton was also aboard, living, sleeping, stewing under a make-shift tarp made of low thread-count sheets. She says she has taken other cruises in the past, so she isn’t entirely soured on them.
“This is the first terrible experience like this I’ve had,” Tipton told CBS 2. “I think I’ll stay on dry land probably for the next couple of vacations.”
The towed cruise ship made land Thursday night. Tipton and Berry weren’t sure how soon they could be back to the Chicago area.
Sandeep Berry, left; Rian Tipton (Berry family; Facebook)
