Claudine Housen, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
FOR MANY of the passengers who were on board the ill-fated Star Princess cruise line, the experience of a fire at sea will forever be etched in their minds.
"It was a little bit before 3: 00 o'clock in the morning and I heard some noise and thought people were having a party out on the balconies by us and so I walked down," Beth Bostrom related to The Sunday Gleaner. She and husband Marty were on the cruise to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary.
"I just kind of looked around and I looked to my left and there were just flames shooting up the side of the ship, maybe ten balconies from me, and I turned around and screamed at my husband: 'Oh my gosh the ship's on fire!'."
"Everybody was asleep on our side of the boat and there were only about three or four people on the balcony to see it. No alarm went off. There was nothing. We were standing there thinking we do not know what to do," she continued.
According to Mrs. Bostrom it was another twenty minutes before the ships alarm was sounded.
MUSTER STATION
"We could not go down the steps so there were a couple of us who went to the steps at the end of our hallway (where) there was an emergency door. We could not get out but there was a manual release, so we opened it and made our way to the muster station."
Jamaican navy officer Andrew Edwards and his wife Yuki
were also aboard the ship. He described his experience to The Gleaner.
"I got up and went outside up to the top of the deck and I saw smoke everywhere and then about a minute or two later they sounded the alarm for pretty much for all the crew to muster in designated locations," Mr. Edwards said.
