The government is chartering three Carnival Cruise Line ships to help house refugees.
Does this mean they’ll have to listen to Kathy Lee Gifford sing? Haven’t these people been through enough?
According to the AP report appearing in the Washington Post, the three ships can house as many as 7,000 refugees:
The Ecstasy, the Sensation and the Holiday will be pulled from regular use starting Monday at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The cost of the charters was not disclosed.
Carnival spokesman Vance Gulliksen said Saturday from Miami, where the company is based, that pleasure cruises were canceled to make the ships available for the next six months.
“I can’t put a number on it, but we are displacing people to accommodate the FEMA charter,” he said. “You’re looking at tens of thousands.”
Ecstasy, normally ported at Galveston for four-and five-day cruises, and Sensation, normally in New Orleans for similar trips, will both be pulled Monday and are scheduled to dock and house Katrina refugees in Galveston, Texas.
The Holiday, which normally sails four and five-day Mexico cruises out of Mobile, Ala., will be pulled Thursday and likely docked in Mobile.
About 920 crew members will staff the Ecstasy and Sensation with about 660 running the Holiday. The Ecstasy and Sensation can each take 2,606 total passengers, while the Holiday can hold 1,800.
The cruise ship industry has been debating helping out in the hurricane for several days, says a Sun-Sentinel report published a few days ago:
But cruise operators noted there were many complicated issues involved in mounting a cruise-based relief effort. Among them is the safety of navigating the Mississippi River upstream to New Orleans after the storm.
Hurricane winds and storm surge may have sunk objects in the river. There were reports of widespread silting of the channels in the river and destruction of navigational buoys and other aids. A survey of the channels by the Army Corps of Engineers or other authorities will be needed to assure safe passage for ships on the river.
Shallow-draft tugs and barges are currently the only ships cleared for operation on the river by the Coast Guard.
Cruise industry officials said they received an exploratory inquiry on Wednesday through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which maintains close contact with the cruise lines because of health inspections of ships.
Michael Crye, president of the International Council of Cruise Lines, a trade group, said it is still unclear whether the ships would be used to evacuate residents, as a base for disaster relief workers, or as long-term housing.
“We are exploring what is feasible and trying to talk to the federal government,” Crye said.
If a ship is used for more than emergency relief, Crye said, there would have to be a supply of potable water and a means of delivering food to the vessel. Also to be worked out is where the ship would be moored.
The line in perhaps the best position to help is Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines, although Crye said virtually all of the council’s 16 members are working on the request.
So in the end, Carnival agreed (no word if Gifford will provide the entertainment…)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.