a new week and a scary video

Another week, another lot of passengers to embark in a few hours. I'm honestly going to miss last week's bunch alot- they were great. They were polite, friendly and classy people (no riff raff) who participated in everything and were just... well, nice.

Eastern Caribbean crowds seem (generally) to be more like that... the Western Run attracts a few more riff-raff, Carnival type passengers (although still filled with lovely people- a few always stand out as being pretty horrible).

I had great fun with my 18-20's this week - I sceduled activities at the start of the week and did them up their own little princess patter. THings were still a little disorganised, but this week all systems are go. I have 151 18-20's this week - I've already done up their info sheet and posted it all to their rooms. I hope they're nice- I'll miss the last lot.

Wednesday last week was crew drills- a normally fairly boring affair which this time became incredibly disturbing. Tim gathered all the stairway guides and muster personell (that's me) into the Princess Theatre where he showed us a video.

He warned us it was disturbing and graphic but i wasn't quite ready for what we saw. It was a video containing original footage from the 1990 Scandanavian Star disaster. Basically, a fire broke out on this passenger liner in the middle of the night, the captain did all the wrong things and all the officers actually abandoned ship before evacuating all the passengers. The ship was towed to port and the fire was put out. 153 passengers (about half those on board) died - mostly from asphyixiation trying to get out of their cabins at 2am with no lights and noxious smoke filling all the hallways. If you are interested, look it up on wikipedia - you'll find they actually recommissioned the ship and it was sailing until 2001 which makes me feel so so sick.

The video was the actual footage of what they found when the went on the ship and thinking about it now still makes me upset and feel ill. dead bodies everywhere, their hands scrunched up, lying in hallways, climbing out of beds, trying anything to get out. it's horrifying at the best of times, but when you realise taht this COULD HAPPEN TO YOU it certainly reaffirms your focus on saftey.

It was horrible. But I certainly have planned my escape route if that was to happen on board. If there is no way out down the corridor or the 3 blocks of passenger stairs, I am going to go out onto our deck 11 balcony with my life jacket and climb down onto the very front of the ship and wait at the crew pool. if the fire comes to get me, I will abandon ship. FOr sure.

I have counted the doors and distances for all my escape routes- i'm so glad i live on deck 11, far above underwater (deck 3) and not locked in on the balcony-less decks 4 - 6. weep weep. saftey.