by GREG NIKKEL of the Weyburn Review
Weyburn travel agent Linda Porth has a new appreciation for life and for her family after a harrowing experience where the cruise ship she was on burned and sank last week.
Porth was one of only 18 Canadians on board the cruise ship Sun Vista, which was nearing the end of a cruise on Thursday off the coast of Malaysia, when a fire broke out in the engine room. She had been on the cruise along with 15 other travel agents from across Canada, including one other agent from Saskatchewan.
"You're really numb at the time, it's like, 'this isn't happening.' You know how it always happened to other people but it doesn't happen to me. It could have been a lot worse if it had happened at night, and we were also lucky the water was really calm," said Linda.
She was back at work by Tuesday afternoon, and will be going out on another cruise tour, this time to Alaska from June 2 to 7.
She admits she'll be nervous going on this cruise, particularly at the start, but added she has been on this tour before and is confident it will be a safe one.
She recounted her experience from her home on Monday after flying out from Singapore; she arrived at the Regina airport to an emotional homecoming, with many of her family, relatives and co-workers present to welcome her.
At the time the fire began on the ship, about mid-afternoon on Thursday, she was in her cabin when the lights and air conditioning went out, and she heard a commotion out in the hallway. She went out to have a look and people were trying to make their way to the stairs in the dark.
"A member of the crew said I should go up to deck 8. I went up on deck and could see smoke coming out of the ship by the smokestack," said Linda.
The crew had initially announced they were going to try and smother the fire with a carbon dioxide bomb, but shortly afterwards the smoke started getting worse again, and the passengers were asked to go to their muster stations by the lifeboats. The passengers weren't allowed back to their cabins where their lifejackets and possessions were, but lifejackets were supplied on deck.
Linda, along with most of the 1,100 passengers and crew on the ship, had to leave everything behind. Linda said at the time they assumed the fire would be extinguished and the ship towed into port, and were shocked when told the ship had actually sunk.
"They gave the word to abandon ship, and we were put in lifeboat 13," she said, adding with a laugh they were told this number means good luck in Chinese.
Her lifeboat, loaded with 66 passengers, including crew members who jumped over the rail to clamber on board, was lowered into the water around 6 p.m. local time and tied together with the other lifeboats, and darkness descended about an hour later. They were in the water for a total of five hours, an experience which Linda described as the most frightening of the whole time.
"It was pretty scary, because it was dark. You could still see the ship, and you could see the lights from the other boats. The boat would really start bobbing around and people would get sick; we also had five injured people on our boat, including three who lost fingers in the chains," said Linda.
After five hours, her lifeboat was picked up by a Russian freighter, which took them into Penang; company representatives for the ship were present and provided a hotel room for the passengers, and the next day they were taken with a police escort to the airport where a charter flight took them to Singapore.
Linda's mother, Edith Porth of Tribune, was called by her daughter as soon as she reached Penang, in order to beat the newscasts of the ship's sinking.
"I knew her itinerary pretty closely, so if I had heard about it on the news I would've known it was her ship. She was very emotional and upset when she called. She said, 'Mom, I've lost everything'," said Edith. "I just can't imagine what they went through."
The passengers didn't hear until after they were on the freighter that the ship had sunk, said Linda. "We couldn't believe it."
Company people gave the passengers $800 in Singapore currency, so they could replace clothing and personal items before their flights home. In Linda's case, all she had was what she had on, a bathing suit and cover-up, shorts and sandals.
During the experience, particularly when she was in the lifeboat, Linda's greatest fear was not being able to see her family again.
"The hardest part for me was thinking I might never see my family again. At the airport, my family was there, including my mother, my sister and her family, aunts and uncles, and my co-workers came up too," said Linda. "I've had wonderful support from friends and family. You don't know how much they mean to you until something like this happens."
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