Carnival Cruise Line announced Tuesday that one of its ships would dock in New Orleans to house first responders working on Hurricane Ida response.
In an agreement with the city and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Carnival Glory will be docked at the Port of New of Orleans before resuming scheduled cruises on September 19.
Carnival said the Glory will “serve as emergency housing for frontline workers directly involved in the city’s infrastructure recovery and healthcare needs” and said the ship can house up to to 2,600 hospital workers, first responders, as well as city, utility, and emergency workers.
“While we want to provide the city of New Orleans with an economic boost by restarting guest operations, we want to first provide this critical housing support to address emergency needs and to get power restored to the region,” Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in a press release.
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Hurricane Ida came ashore in southern Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 last week. Over a million people in the New Orleans metro area were without power.
Ida also forced Carnival Cruise Line to cancel departures, another blow to the industry after nearly two years of difficulties caused by the pandemic.
The cruise industry is slowly restarting, but with several notable changes, including social distancing.
Despite the new protocols, the ships have not been fully free of Covid. Last month, Carnival announced that a former passenger died after contracting coronavirus and falling ill aboard a cruise sailing near Belize in July. A week before that passenger’s death, Carnival implemented a mask mandate aboard all their ships.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
