What The “Poop Ship” Says About Modern Society

What The “Poop Ship” Says About Modern Society

Have you heard about the “poop ship?” If not, you must have been avoiding news and social media for the past few days because it was EVERYWHERE. How hot is the story? This hot on Fox.

poopship

A cruise ship disabled for days at sea finally docked with some 4,200 people aboard late Thursday, with anxious passengers lining the decks to cheer the end to a journey on a ship compared to a shanty town due to reports of vile conditions onboard.

The cruise ship terminal in Mobile, Ala., was raucous as thousands of passengers streamed off the Carnival Triumph, which was stranded for five days in the Gulf of Mexico after an engine-room fire left the ship without power.

Carnival said early Friday that all 3,143 passengers were off the ship.

Pulled by a tugboat at a maddeningly slow pace, the ship finally arrived in the port at about 9:15 p.m. Central time Thursday after taking about six grueling hours to be towed from the mouth of Mobile Bay some 30 miles to the port.

….Thelbert Lanier was waiting at the port for his wife, who texted him early Thursday.

“Room smells like an outhouse. Cold water only, toilets haven’t work in 3 1/2 days. Happy Valentines Day!!! I love u & wish I was there,” she said in the text message, which was viewed by The Associated Press. “It’s 4:00 am. Can’t sleep…it’s cold & I’m starting to get sick.”

Renee Shanar was on board with her husband. In a text message to AP, she said Carnival told the passengers they are delayed again “because of winds.”

“We think they don’t want media there,” she wrote.

Shanar said conditions were “horrible.” There was food, but bathrooms weren’t flushing.

“People have gotten food poisoning. Old people have fallen and hurt themselves,” she wrote in a text message.

…Disgusted by the foul air and heat on the lower decks, many passengers hauled mattresses and bed sheets onto the top deck and slept there, even staying put in a soaking rain. As the ship approached the coast, a slew of Carnival workers removed the bedding and took it downstairs.

“Today they cleaned the ship, they’re serving better food, covering up basically, but at least they’re making it more bearable,” said Kalin Hill, of Houston, who boarded the Triumph as part of a bachelorette party.

In a text message, though, she described deplorable conditions over the past few days.

“The lower floors had it the worst, the floors `squish’ when you walk and lots of the lower rooms have flooding from above floors,” Hill wrote. “Half the bachelorette party was on two; the smell down there literally chokes you and hurts your eyes.”

She said “there’s poop and urine all along the floor. The floor is flooded with sewer water … and we had to poop in bags.”

The company disputed the accounts of passengers who described the ship as filthy, saying employees were doing everything to ensure people were comfortable.

Wow, so 4,000 people had a crummy vacation because a cruise ship broke down and the company was too incompetent to handle it properly — and it was pretty incompetent. When the Soviets blockaded Berlin in 1948, we managed to feed the whole city for almost a year by air. Meanwhile, more than 60 years later, a billion dollar cruise ship line can’t manage to get hot dogs, hamburgers and a repair crew to a drifting pleasure boat in a timely fashion.

Yet and still, this is what captures everyone’s imagination? Pampered vacationers on a cruise line having a few less than pleasant days? Is this the sort of First World problem that frightens or horrifies us? What are we, the Jetsons now? “You wouldn’t believe it, Jane! I had to press a button 7 times at work today!” Instead it’s, “You wouldn’t believe it honey, there were Americans who went on vacation but ended up having to live like 40% of the world’s population does every day of their lives! It was horrible!”

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