Passengers aboard Carnival Sensation were sent into panic after smoke filled areas of the ship in the early hours of Monday morning, February 11, as it returned to Miami FL from the Western Caribbean.
According to Troy McCarty, the fire alarms had not gone off at all and he hadn’t seen any crew members. A little after 3:00 a.m. they couldn’t even see in front of them for 6 feet when they exited the room, and it had been hard to breathe.
Other passengers onboard Carnival Sensation shared similar stories about the accident.
A Twitter user wrote it was the worst cruise ever. At 3:00 a.m. people had been screaming in the hall outside of the cabin and there was thick smoke but "the crew didn’t even knock on...our door to tell us to evacuate... I ended bumping into a crew member and ask him which way to go and he just ran off."
Another guest tweeted he was on the 6th floor during the accident and they were "yelled at to evacuate with zero direction." The staff "had no idea what to do except CLEAN."
One more passenger, also on the 6th floor, also wrote that "smoke was so thick you could not see." All floors above 6 on the rear of the ship had a smoke even lido fire doors were closed and the area was full of smoke.
Replying to a passenger on Twitter, Carnival wrote there was no fire onboard. "Smoke was coming from a housekeeping storage area on Deck 6, but when first responders arrived, they confirmed there was no fire.”
At the time of the accident, the vessel was at the end of a 4-day Western Caribbean cruise (itinerary Feb 7-11) roundtrip from homeport Miami to Key West (Florida) and Cozumel Mexico (Feb 9).
For other Carnival Sensation accidents and incidents see at the ship's CruiseMinus page.