Rescue Search Continues For Missing Cruise Ship Employee
During the early hours of the New Year, a cruise ship employee tumbled 82 feet overboard. The cruise line has not identified the employee, whom co-workers reported as going overboard about 50 minutes after ringing in the New Year on the Carnival Sensation, which was 20 miles east of Vero Beach, Florida.
Co-workers threw him a life ring, but he never resurfaced.
Ship officials immediately began a search and contacted the Coast Guard for help.
The employee was an off-duty member of Carnival’s entertainment staff, the cruise line said.
The Sensation helped with the search shortly after the accident and returned to port. It was returning from a four-day cruise to the Bahamas. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the young man at this time as well as with his friends and family,” a Carnival spokesman said.
Search-and-rescue coordinators from Miami and Fort Pierce used four boats, two helicopters and two planes in their search. Carnival is also assisting the search, said Coast Guard spokesman James Harless. The aircraft returned to base once nightfall hit. The Coast Guard kept an 87-foot cutter in the area during the night of January 1, 2009, and will reassess the search on January 2, 2009.
Rescuers were searching more than 1,000 square miles. The current would take him in a northeast direction, Harless said.
He added that the man’s 82-foot fall and other conditions hurt his chances of survival. “It is a high distance. He fell into 7-foot seas without a life jacket at night,” Harless said. “There were winds and strong current he was battling with, along with the high seas.”
Local law enforcement in Vero Beach will investigate. Carnival also will conduct its own investigation, he said.
