Cruise separates from pier, guest falls into water from gangway
The passenger was in the process disembarking while Norwegian Epic was docked in Catania, Sicily, on May 30, according to a spokesperson for the cruise line.
'On duty crew members were able to immediately assist the guest from the water and see that they were evaluated by the medical team,' the spokesperson told USA TODAY in an emailed statement. 'It was determined that they sustained minor injuries and were transported to a local hospital for further examination and treatment.'
The ship departed from Civitavecchia on May 24 for a 10-day cruise with stops in Italy, Greece, Malta and France, according to CruiseMapper.
Tyler Roys, Senior Meteorologist with AccuWeather, said there were wind gusts up to 45 miles per hour in the afternoon from the east-northeast. 'Gusts like this are not usual as we move into the summer months but are more common during the winter season,' he said in an email.
The cruise line halted disembarkation and embarkation until the weather improved and 'the ship was able to safely dock again.'
'During this interruption, our crew were actively attending to our guests until they were able to re-embark the ship,' the spokesperson added. 'As always the safety of our guests and crew is our top priority.'
The incident isn't the only one of its kind in recent years. Carnival Cruise Line's Carnival Magic ship hit a pier in Jamaica during windy weather in February 2024. Wind also caused an MSC Cruises ship, MSC Sinfonia, and another Norwegian vessel, Norwegian Prima, to break from their moorings the previous month.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Norwegian cruise guest falls from gangway, suffers 'minor injuries'
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They're hooked on sleeping pills. It's framed as addiction, and no one says that someone is addicted to their Ozempic, even though a lifestyle change could perhaps obviate the need. No one says that they are addicted... Oh, that person is totally addicted to their blood pressure medication, even though maybe a change in lifestyle would help change that. Or that they're addicted to their statins, So I sort of bristle. And those who prescribe these medicines say like, look, if the benefit outweighs the risk and they're used properly, sometimes the real side effect is just being dependent on these drugs, and there's a difference between dependence and addiction. A surprisingly small number of people who take these drugs regularly, like benzodiazepines, like Ativan and Ambien and Klonopin, all these things, a surprisingly small number, like 7% increase their doses if they take it every night. So that's very small. However, there are cognitive decrements over time... Or not decrements. It can interfere with your memory and it can increase your odds of falling as you get older. And those are, to me, the real persuasive reasons to get off. Taylor Wilson: I want to back up a minute here to talk about something many may not be aware of, and that's that historically, at least in some eras, people used to sleep in two blocks. What do you know about this? How did this function and really why did this kind of sleep pattern work for some folks? Jennifer Senior: Well, it was sort of, I think, natural. It seemed that this is, and it has not been proven everywhere, but there's plenty of both historical evidence and also some in a lab by this wonderful guy named Tom Ware that shows that if you sort of just put someone in a room, 14 hours of darkness, what will happen is that their sleep will naturally split into two. They'll sleep for a phase, wake up for a phase, and then sleep for a phase again. And historically, there's all sorts of evidence that people would sleep for a phase, get up and read for a while, do some quiet things, do light tasks, maybe sing, maybe have sex, and then go back to bed. So there seemed to be two phases, and this was much easier to do when midnight was actually midnight. You were going bed when the sun had set, or just after were you were tethered to the rhythms of the earth as opposed to a wired electricity run world. Taylor Wilson: What is something you wish you knew when you first started on this journey? Jennifer Senior: To get on it earlier and to not be as afraid... Cognitive behavioral therapy is, I think, often done in conjunction with taking something like Klonopin or Ativan or Ambien, and I was so petrified of becoming hooked on them that I didn't... I refused to take them and I couldn't get my sleep to contract as a result of it. My body was so completely dysregulated and confused about it was so all over the place that I really needed something to regularize it and stabilize it, and I flipped out, and I think if anybody goes and tries CBT, I and their practitioner says to them, and I'm going to have to be on their recommendation, do this in concert with a drug, because you really need it. Don't sit there and freak out and think that you can't or shouldn't, because it happens a lot and people freak out a lot. Taylor Wilson: All right, Jennifer Senior, thank you so much for coming on the Excerpt. Jennifer Senior: Thank you so much for having me. Taylor Wilson: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's the Excerpt.
