Crashed cruise ship passenger rescued after 32 hours: ‘Thanksgiving Miracle’

“He had signs of hypothermia, shock, dehydration”

The Thanksgiving miracle was called the rescue of a cruise ship passenger who had fallen overboard after more than a day in the water. The US Coast Guard found a man about 20 miles south of Southwest Pass, Louisiana, after he fell overboard on the Carnival Valor.

The US Coast Guard announced what some officials called the “Thanksgiving Miracle”: a passenger was rescued from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico after falling overboard from a cruise ship.

According to The Guardian, at 8:25 pm on Thursday, the Coast Guard found a 28-year-old man at sea about 20 miles south of the coast of Louisiana after he apparently fell overboard of the Carnival Valor cruise ship en route. from New Orleans to Mexico Wednesday night.

In a statement to CNN, Carnival said the man went missing on Thanksgiving Day after he left his sister at a bar on board at 11:00 pm the previous day, likely to go to the bathroom.

The young man never returned, prompting his sister to alert the crew the next day. CNN reports that numerous announcements were made throughout the liner for a person to contact guest support, but to no avail.

Around 2:30 p.m. Thursday, the cruise ship alerted the New Orleans Coast Guard that a passenger was missing. “The monitors then coordinated the launch of several rescue teams to begin the search,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Rescue teams included a boat from Venice, Florida, a helicopter from New Orleans, and planes from Florida and Alabama, Coast Guard search and rescue coordinator Lieutenant Seth Gross told CNN.

Searches over 200 miles away were complicated by the time difference between when the passenger was last seen and when the Coast Guard received the accident alert. “We knew communication with sailors in the Gulf of Mexico would be critical,” Gross said.

Six hours later, crew members of the Crinis discovered a “man in the water,” the US Coast Guard said. The man turned out to be a missing passenger.

The crew of a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter quickly “flew into the area…lifted the man onto the helicopter and flown him to the New Orleans Lakefront Airport awaiting emergency medical care,” the US Coast Guard said.

“He was able to give his name and confirmed that he was the one who fell overboard,” Gross told CNN. “He showed signs of hypothermia, shock, dehydration,” but the Coast Guard said he was in stable condition late Friday morning.

Interestingly, the miraculously rescued passenger did not give “a clear explanation of why he fell overboard or at what time it happened.”

“The fact that he was able to stay afloat and above the surface of the water for such a long period of time is just something you can’t take for granted and definitely something that will stay with me forever,” said Seth Gross. , adding that the water temperature on Thursday night in the bay was just above 21 degrees.

Gross added: “The will to live is something you have to consider in every search and rescue case. It’s one of the longest soaks I’ve heard of and one of those Thanksgiving miracles.”