Tamara Carrasco was in the dining room of the American Heritage cruise ship, docked in the Port of New Orleans, when she spotted a tanker heading straight toward them.
Carrasco, a retired elementary school teacher from Atlanta, was seated at a table by the windows so she could look out at the Mississippi River. She saw the tanker crossing under the bridge nearby and noticed it was lowering its anchor.
“I thought, ‘Why would they be anchoring here?’” she said. Her friend turned to her: “It’s not stopping. It’s going to hit us.”
Carrasco was skeptical, until she saw the crew running across the tanker’s deck “like ants.”
“What was going through my mind was: We’re going to die,” she said.
The tanker, Atlantic Asphalt, crashed directly into the American Cruise Lines riverboat on Friday, causing the ship to topple over and sink as passengers rushed to evacuate. Several people ended up in the river and had to be pulled out by first responders. Of the nearly 200 people on board, 32 were transported to hospitals. None were critically injured, officials said.
“We have zero people unaccounted for, which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi,” New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said at a press conference.
Carrasco, 65, said when the tanker approached the riverboat, she ran to the opposite end to get as far away from the glass windows as possible. She found a nook on the other end of the ship where she braced herself.
“It hit so hard I flew to the ground,” she said.
After the collision, she ran to the stairwell in the middle of the boat and could see into the dining room. The tanker, she said, had broken through the glass windows and water was pouring in.
“Seen the movie ‘Titanic’? There was a big gash and water is flying in, and I said, ‘Oh, this is going down,’” she said.
She ran up to the next floor and exited the cruise ship usinga gangplank. The crowd gathering on dry land was in shock. Carrasco said it was like after 9/11.
“We’re all just kind of wandering in a daze,” she said.
They were checked for injuries. Carrasco said she has back issues and her friend has neck issues, so they both wanted to get checked out to be safe.
She was in the waiting area in the emergency room at University Medical Center in New Orleans, fielding calls from friends and family, with a blanket wrapped around her. It was “patriotic day” on the boat, so she was wearing a red, white, and navy blue Ralph Lauren shirt.
“This is the most memorable Friday the 13th I’ve ever had,” she told her older sister over the phone.
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