The ship, which has a crew of 26, transports mostly Dominican passengers back and forth from San Juan to the Dominican Republic.
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The Coast Guard responded Wednesday morning to a fire aboard the 561-foot passenger/cargo vessel Caribbean Fantasy, approximately 2 nautical miles north of San Juan Harbor in Puerto Rico. The most serious cases among the passengers, who were traveling to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic, involve shock and sea sickness, San Juan emergency management chief Nazario Lugo said.
The other mechanic, Marlon Doblado, said they had worked to extinguish the fire for two hours without success.
The cause of the fire is unclear but it started in the ship’s engine room, a Coast Guard spokeswomen said. “I asked and they told me it was nothing, that it was under control”, she said. More than 500 passengers and crew were being evacuated on Wednesday from the burning s.
Dominican passenger Maria Prensa said she was collecting her luggage when she smelled smoke.
A Unified Command comprised of federal, state and industry agencies and organizations has been established at Coast Guard Sector San Juan to manage the incident and salvage efforts of the Caribbean Fantasy.
(AP Photo/Carlos Giusti). Smokes spills from the the cruise ship Caribbean Fantasy off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016.
“Some of them passed out”, she recalled as she and other passengers sat barefoot near the San Juan harbor waiting for a bus to take them to the ship’s original destination.
“There is probably dehydration and nervous shock, but we can confirm that almost 500 people are all on the way to port”.
On the docks, several dozen people were carried in on stretchers, one of which held a man hooked to an IV line who was cradling a bawling baby clad only in a diaper.
The ships run several times weekly between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and was arriving in San Juan when the fire broke out, Castrodad said.
Officials with Puerto Rico’s Natural Resources Department said that as a precaution, they removed two large manatees from the area that had been recently released into the wild. “I was in the restaurant when I saw the smoke”.
“I feel nervous”, she said, her hands trembling. Her daughter, whom she has not seen for 14 years, was aboard the ship.
“She said, ‘You need to be strong, ‘” Pereira said.
The fire erupted in the engine room and is now spreading to the rest of the ship, Miami-based Coast Guard spokeswoman Marilyn Fajardo said by phone.
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The fire is just the latest setback for Caribbean Fantasy, which has been plagued over the past few years with multiple substandard cleanliness ratings from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in addition to having one of its ferries busted for carrying drugs.
