(Spirit Lake)—A local woman and her two children are among those on board a cruise ship that caught fire early yesterday (Mon.) while at open sea.
Kathy Kelly of Spirit Lake, along with her two children, were on board the Royal Carribean cruise ship “Grandeur of The Seas” which caught fire around 2:50 a.m. The fire was extinguished two hours later with no injuries reported.
KUOO news spoke with Kathy’s husband, Pat, who was also supposed to go on the cruise but wound up staying home after aggravating an injury. He says he spoke with his wife shortly after the incident…(click here for comment.) “We were deck 7 in the back, I guess those guys were, and the fire started on deck 3 in the back. So, that was my understanding anyway, so she was able to smell smoke that permeated. But there wasn’t any fire or anything in her room or anything.”
Kelly says his wife and kids, along with the others on the ship, were evacuated from their cabins and taken to various rescue stations…(click here for comment.) “They were there for about two hours and they were fortunate because the person that was in charge of their group said let’s go in where they have the shows, let’s go inside because it’s cold and damp. But she said there were other groups that were out there for five hours.”
Kelly says he didn’t learn of the situation until after getting a text from his sister…(click here for comment.) “I didn’t even pay attention because I thought, you know, like, there’s a thousand ships out there. Why would it be our ship, you know? And lo and behold it was Royal Carribbean, you know, and I was just amazed. It was just unbelievable.”
At that point, Kelly says all kinds of thoughts were going through his mind…(click here for comment.) “The fear of the unknown, you know. Do they have this thing under control or that? What’s going to happen…that kind of thing.”
Kelly says his wife and children, along with others on the ship, are due back in Baltimore, where the trip began, sometime later today. The cruise line was making arrangements for the flights after the ship was able to sail under its own power into the Bahamas. From Baltimore, Kelly says his wife is trying to make arrangements to fly back to the Twin Cities.
