Terror at sea: Helicopter rescues frighten cruise passengers
STAVANGER, Norway — Rodney Horgen recalled the moment he thought he was facing the end: when a huge wave crashed through the Viking Sky cruise ship’s glass doors and swept his wife 30 feet across the floor.
Horgen, 62, of Minnesota, rough, frigid western was visiting coast. Struggling in Norway on a dream heavy seas to avoid pilgrimage to his ancestral being dashed on the homeland rocky coast, the ship when the luxury issued a mayday call cruise quickly turned Saturday afternoon. into a nightmare. Horgan said he
The Viking Sky was knew something was carrying 1,373 passengers badly amiss when the and crew, going guests on the heaving from Norway’s ship were summoned Arctic north to the to the vessel’s muster southern city of points.
Stavanger when it “When the windows had engine trouble and door flew along Norway’s open and the 2 meters (6 feet) of water swept people and tables 20 to 30 feet that was the breaker. I said to myself, ‘This is it,’” Horgen told The Associated Press. “I grabbed my wife but I couldn’t hold on. And she was thrown across the room. And then she got thrown back again by the wave coming back.”
Photos posted on social media showed the ship listing from side to side and furniture smashing violently into the ship’s walls. The hands and faces of fellow passengers were cut and bleeding from the shattered glass, he sai d.
An experienced fisherman, Horgen said he had never before encountered such rough boating conditions.
“I did not have a lot of hope. I knew how cold that water was and where we were and the waves and everything. You would not last very long,” he said. “That was very, very frightening.”
And yet, the scariest part was yet to co m e.
That was when hundreds of passengers, including Horgen, were winched off the heaving ship by helicopter, one-by-one as winds howled around them in the dark of night, by rescue workers trying to evacuate everyone on board.
Waves up to 26feet(8-meters-) high were smacking into the ship, making it impossible to evacuate anyone by boat.
The ship was within 100 meters (300 feet) of striking rocks under the water and 900 meters (2,950 feet) from shore when it stopped and anchored in Hustadvika Bay so passengers could be evacuated, Coast Guard official Emil Heggelund told Norway’s VG newspaper.
Norway’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center stepped in, sending in five helicopters. Passenger Alexus Sheppard told the AP that people with injuries or disabilities were winched off the cruise ship first.
“It was frightening at first. And when the gen er al alarm sounded it became VERY real,” she wrote in a text.
Janet Jacob, among the first group of passengers evacuated to the nearby town of Molde, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the winds felt “like a tornado” and prompted her to start praying for everyone on the ship.
“I was afraid. I’ve never experienced anything so scary,” she said.
“We saw t w o people taken off by stretcher,” passenger Dereck Brown told Norwegian newspaper Romsdal Budstikke. “Peo p l e were alarmed. Many were frightened but they were calm.”
Viking Ocean Cruises, the company that owns and operates the ship, said 20 people were injured and received treatment at medical centers.
The airlift evacuation went all through the night and into Sunday morning, slowing for a bit when two of the five rescue helicopters had to be diverted to save nine crewmembers from a nearby ailing cargo ship.
In all, 479 passengers were airlifted to land, leaving 436 passengers and 458 crew members onboard, the company said, when the Viking Sky’s captain decided on a new plan.
Einar Knudsen of Norway’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center said the airlift was halted when the captain decided before noon Sunday to try to bring the cruise ship to the nearby port of Molde on its own engi n es.
“The conditions were good enough for the captain to have no more evacuations,” Knudsen told the AP. ( AP)