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Elderly couple booted from boat for refusal to take safety lesson
Anyone who does not think the cruise industry is serious about safety should consider a recent incident: an 84-year-old woman and her 90-year-old husband were kicked off a Seabourn Sojourn ship because they refused to attend the mandatory life board exercise.
Cruise Weekly reported the incident, saying the couple was on a three-leg trip on the 450-passenger luxury vessel. Reports seemed to indicate the couple had already gone through a safety drill on the earlier leg of the trip.
The husband attended the drill, but his wife said she didn’t feel well and had done it before, according to Cruise Week,
The crackdown began after the Costa Concordia accident last January. That has already led to at least one other cruiser being removed from a ship, involving the 1,916-passenger Westerdam, for not joining a safety drill.
"Cruise line policies on passenger safety drills came under intense scrutiny after the Jan. 13 Costa Concordia accident, which resulted in 32 deaths," said USA Today.
At the time of the accident, there were nearly 700 passengers on the ship who had not received a safety briefing, the newspaper said. The newly boarded passengers were set to have a safety briefing the next morning, but the vessel sank off the coast of Tuscany in Italy.
In the past, the rule was to have safety drills within 24 hours of boarding. But after the accident, major cruise lines announced they would hold safety drills immediately after passengers got on board.
By David Wilkening
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