News broke tonight that two small children were pulled from a pool from NCL’s Norwegian Breakaway as the cruise ship was sailing from New York to the Bahamas this morning.
Both children were unresponsive. The younger child (age 4) died on the cruise ship. The other child (age 6) reportedly was medevaced by the U.S. Coast Guard accompanied by his grandmother a nurse from the ship.
WBTW aired a video (below) of the sad events.
This is the third event in the last nine months involving children who have drowned or were permanently injured in cruise ship swimming pools.
The first tragedy involved a young child (also 4 yeas old) who slipped under the water on the Disney Fantasy cruise ship and sustained brain damage. You can read our articles below:
Dangerous Disney Cruise Ship Swimming Pool: Thoughts from a Concerned Cruiser
Imperfect Parents & Corporate Irresponsibility: Why No Lifeguards on Disney Cruise Ships?
Swimming Pool Mishap on Disney Fantasy Sends 4 Year Old to Hospital
To Disney’s credit, it subsequently began to assign lifeguards to the swimming pools on its cruise ships.
The second recent event involved the death of a young child who drowned on the Carnival Victory. Our article is below:
6 Year Old Drowns on Carnival Victory Cruise Ship
There is never an excuse when a child drowns in a swimming pool operated by an amusement park or cruise ship. Protecting children is the joint obligation of the parents and cruise line. There needs to be a combination of both personal responsibility and corporate responsibility to take care of kids around a pool.
The Breakaway is suppose to be one of the newer and bigger cruise ships NCL offers to the public. It is a shame that NCL decided not to assign lifeguards to the pool from where the children were eventually pulled unconscious. What lesson did NCL learn from the Disney and Carnival tragedies?
The cruise industry will collect between $35 and $40 billion a year, tax free, but NCL won’t assign lifeguards to the public pools?
NCL apologized. However, cruising families with children deserve reasonable care exhibited by the cruise lines and lifeguards to watch over the public pools, not after-the-fact apologies.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia / Dickelbers