A photo posted to Facebook by a passenger of the Carnival cruise ship local Osage Countian Tracey Farmer was on last week.
The first couple of days of Tracey Farmer’s cruise aboard Carnival’s Triumph was fabulous.
But when she woke up at 5 a.m. Sun., Feb. 10, the dream trip took on a darker hue.
“Alpha. Alpha. Hurry” was blaring through the intercom, waking Farmer and her co-worker friends.
Then the lights went out.
“Why did you turn off the lights?” one roommate called from the bathroom, not realizing that all the lights were off. Farmer ran out onto her ninth story balcony to see the tail of the 4,200-passenger cruise ship in flames. What Farmer didn’t know was that the flames were from an engine fire that would cut off power and water to the ship for days, leaving them afloat at sea and causing many to flee stuff and unsanitary situations by creating a tent city on deck.
“Of course, panic set in,” Farmer said.
Farmer, manager of the Pawhuska McDonald’s, remembered during the safety session about the ship that they were told the worst possible emergency on a ship is a fire.
As the emergency continued, the lower decks began to fill with smoke and people were coming out of their rooms. Farmer and her fellow passengers put life jackets and headed to their proper emergency rendezvous, where they waited for nearly an hour.
The Bigheart Times is a weekly newspaper based out of Barnsdall, Okla. We cover the great Osage County, home to the Osage Nation, rural communities, and many cowboys and ranchers. As one of the largest and still growing publications in Osage County our goal is to provide fair and accurate information to the public as quickly as possible.
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