Posted on 03/04/2010 2:49:20 PM PST by BuckeyeTexan
BARCELONA, Spain — Terrified passengers told Thursday how three giant rogue waves smashed through the front windows of a Mediterranean cruise ship killing two people and causing mass panic on the liner.
The eight-metre (26-foot) high waves injured another 14 people, including one woman in "very serious condition" in hospital. Most of the 1,300 tourists were being repatriated from the Mv Louis Majesty to their home countries on Thursday.
"It was a monster wave... it smashed all the windows. Everything happened so quickly," German passenger Margrit Woffe-Ternes told Spanish public television.
Images filmed by a passenger showed screaming people fleeing as a wall of water crashed through a window and then swept into a lounge area, knocking over furniture. The film was shown by Spanish television.
"It was a tragic moment, water was coming in from all sides and the boat shook," Italian passenger Ervico Curtis told the website of daily newspaper El Pais.
"We didn't know what was happening, if there were dead or injured, only that we were going back to Barcelona," another Italian passenger identified as Franco told Spanish public television.
One German and one Italian passenger were killed in the accident on Wednesday evening as the ship was off the coast of Spain, the owners, Cyprus-based Louis Cruise Line, said.
One 64-year-old woman, was in "very serious" condition, a spokeswoman at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron Hospital said. Spanish media said the woman's legs were broken in the accident. A 59-year-old man was also hospitalised with multiple injuries.
The 200-metre (660-foot) long ship was on a 12-day cruise of the western Mediterranean with 1,350 passengers and 580 crew when it was hit.
It docked in Barcelona late Wednesday to evacuate the dead and injured, start repatriating passengers and carry out repairs.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Video from cruise ship during rogue wave.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni05h-jSTQk&feature=youtube_gdata
OH NOOOOS Just like on 2012.
Just watched about killer waves the other night—think it was on The Science Channel.
Gives me an idea - “Titanic cruises”, complete with iceberg and rushing for the lifeboats.
Wonder how the two passengers died.
Their hearts stopped beating.
Broken glass and other debris.
Shades of The Posiden Adventure...
That’ll do it.
My neighbor was telling me about this incident this morning. She just returned from the same cruise a couple of months ago, she said they ran into a storm on that cruise and many of the passenges got soaked. She was really happy she wasn’t on this ship.
The History Channel has done a program on rogue waves, too. For centuries scientists thought the sailor tales were fake or exaggerated, but they’ve finally come to believe they really exist.
Maybe it was the History Channel I saw the program—one of those stations.
/
(Thought it strange they were worried about 7ft waves last week; figured even surfers are challenged with better than that - though probably missing another equasion here.)
Well, with respect to those injured; traumatized and those who did not survive; I guess you can only say. . ."good it was not worse".
Never even heard of a 'rogue wave' until a few years ago. . .could be one's worst nightmare if traveling 'oer the ocean'. . .or if you just tend to think about it. . .
OK . . .a LOL here. . .with all due respect. . .
Fortunately, they're rare.
They are scary. Frankly, the whole big ocean scares me. Luckily, not too many big waves here in CO.
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