The Truth About The Marriott Rescue Mission

[WalnutBaron]

As a follow-up to an earlier discussion thread about the Marriott rescue mission to St. Thomas, there is a brief story in today's Wall Street Journal providing details of the controversial "abandonment" of "refugees" (words used in some of the published stories last weekend) who were not Marriott guests and therefore were not allowed to board the rescue vessel.

The actual facts as detailed in the Journal article are these:

• Marriott chartered a large ferry two days after Irma had passed and notified its guests trapped on St. Thomas to be at the dock by 5pm last Friday. There was some urgency to get the people out because Jose appeared to be tracking in St. Thomas' direction some 36 hours later. (This turned out not to be the case as Jose turned north, but they obviously did not know where the storm would go at the time.)
• The boat picked up 620 guests from three St. Thomas resorts to take them to Puerto Rico. About 35 people from other hotels showed up at the dock, begging to board. They were asked to wait until all Marriott guests were aboard.
• Once this was accomplished, a Marriott worker told the 35 they could board, but a second employee said no, insisting the local Port Authority denied permission because the 35 were not on the manifest compiled by Marriott in advance. As one can imagine, confusion erupted.
• Some port officials told the 35 non-Marriott guests that they had granted permission but that Marriott did not want to take them. The boat pushed off, leaving the 35 stranded to disperse in the dark.
• On social media, some of the 35 accused Marriott of abandoning them because they were not customers. These were the social media posts that were picked up by certain elements of the main stream media and printed as fact.
• Marriott's PR department told the press the next day that they did have room on the boat for more guests and agreed to take the stranded travelers, but that local port officials refused to allow it. In the immediate aftermath of this statement, the Virgin Islands Port Authority could not be reached for comment.
• More recently, however, Beverly Nicholson-Doty--commissioner of the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism--confirms that local port officials did in fact block boarding because there wasn't time to process additional passenger names before the ship had to leave. "We had to follow protocol", she said. "It was not possible to accommodate passengers who have not undergone the registration process."

 

[davidvel]

Registration and protocol in a disaster?

I wonder if they did this on the Titanic. Maybe this was why so many perished.