The captain sent an SOS

The day was here at last! The five of us would be boarding a cruise for the first time as a birthday
present for my mother, who had turned sixty only two days before. It was the perfect family plan
we were looking forward to for a very long time now. Little did we know about the horror that laid
ahead.
Persuading my mum to board that ship had been no walk in the park: after coming up with every
single thing that might go wrong on a cruise: getting food-poisoned, running aground on the shore,
colliding with another liner, foundering in a storm and even the possibility of being cast up on a
desert island, we got her round to boarding the ship. We all believed it was high time she
overcomes her fears. My sister had been rambling on for days about how statistically, the vast
majority of cruises sail without incidents and are totally safe but I am quite positive that eventually
it was the fact that the ticket price included accommodation, four meals, 24/7 room-service,
swimming pools, along with all sorts of live entertainment that had done the tricks.
On the third night aboard, we went to our cabins at 1 a.m., absolutely exhausted after the cruise
had called at two different ports that afternoon. I was particularly happy, though. After two full
days of feeling a bit dizzy because of the almost unnoticeably pitching movement of the ship, I had
finally started getting my sea-feet. Also, the evening had been wrapped up with an amazing
fireworks show on the deck, so there was nothing else we could wish for. It was only a couple of
hours later, at about 4 a.m., that a fire started in one of the holds. The Capitan and the crew
attempted to fight back the fire, without success whatsoever, and soon the blaze could not be
controlled. All of the passengers were already in bed, but we were roused from our sleep by the
piercing sound of the fire alarm and by the members of the crew who knocked on the doors of our
cabins, asking everyone to get dressed and come on deck. Only then we were informed that three
of the safety officers had run downstairs to survey the damage and the minute they returned, we
were all told to put on our life jackets.
The Captain sent an SOS and demanded that we all take to the boats and abandon ship.
Fortunately, it soon became evident that the crew was highly skilled, and they were behaving as
though they have been on several evacuation simulation programs before. The whole process was
really organized: we were divided in groups according to our cabin numbers and had to take
different evacuation routes. Our family had to run down the deck, and go to the starboard part of
the vessel to board our lifeboat. Of course there were people screaming everywhere, and children
crying all over the place, but we never panicked: to our surprise, even my mum kept saying we
would make it into the lifeboats any minute now. “It’s gonna be OK, said she”, over and over again.
Overall, it took the crew less than half an hour to load, launch and manoeuvre away the lifeboats.
Even when the evacuation had been successful and we knew there would be no victims, it was
devastating to see that towering ship adrift, part of the hull and the deck already on fire, hopelessly
and slowly starting to capsize. The dream was over. We could only wish we had stayed at home.
 Unprecedented heatwave strikes Europe
Temperatures could hit 43C from France to Turkey, with authorities urging everyone to stay home.
Authorities have urged children and older people to stay indoors and issued severe warnings
against dehydration and heatstroke as the unprecedented long-week heatwave begins its advance
across continental Europe.
Meteorologists stated temperatures will reach or even exceed 40C from France to Turkey as hot air
was sucked up from the Sahara by the combination of a storm stalling over the Atlantic and high
pressure over central Europe.
High humidity meant it would feel as 48C, experts warned. “El infierno [hell] is coming,” tweeted
the TV gorgeous tall meteorologist Teresa Dehesa in Italy, where the weather service forecast
temperatures of 44C by Thursday in some of the valleys and warned of an “extreme high risk” of
forest fires.
Likewise, In France, officials in Paris set up “cool rooms” in municipal buildings, opened pools for
late-night swimming and installed extra drinking fountains inasmuch as temperatures in the capital
reached 34C on Friday and were forecast to climb further later in the week.
“I’m worried about people who are downplaying this, who are continuing to exercise each day or
stay out in the sun,” the minister, Thareen Asapt, said. “This affects all of us, nobody being a
superman when it comes to dealing with the extreme heat we’re going to see on Thursday and
Friday,” she told a press conference.