Zaandam cruise ship docking in Fort Lauderdale as ambulances stand by

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Holland America’s Zaandam and Rotterdam cruise ships are docking at Port Everglades Thursday afternoon, and the process of disembarking passengers could last through Saturday.

Many are anxious to step off the ships, ending an ordeal at sea brought on by the deaths of four passengers and illness of more than 200.

Bystanders could see the Zaandam heading into the port as a cluster of ambulances were lined up for the ship to arrive. About 13 passengers needed urgent care, according to the agreement.

Passengers who aren’t sick or showing flu-like symptoms will be escorted off and allowed no contact with the public, a county official told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Private buses, paid for by the cruise company, will take them to empty tarmacs for charter flights. The Floridians will be driven home, except for those living north of Ocala, who will go home on charter flights.

Of the amount of time it’ll take to disembark, passengers only will “get off the ship when the plane is ready” to take them to Europe or other locations, a county official said.

The debate over whether the Zaandam should dock has raged for more than a week. Some county commissioners hesitated letting a sick ship in, and others said it was an international humanitarian crisis that needed resolution.

An estimated 45 passengers who still have a mild illness are expected to stay on the ship. Although the cruise line initially said “no more than 10 people would need immediate critical care in Broward County,” that number was actually 13, according to Thursday’s agreement.

Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale has agreed to accept 10 patients and Larkin Community Hospital in Miami will take up to four.

The Zaandam and Rotterdam combined have 1,250 passengers, including 311 Americans from 19 states. There are 52 Floridians, nine of them from South Florida.

The four passengers who died were aboard the Zaandam, and 233 passengers and crew members had been ill. The bodies are still aboard the ship, kept in a morgue.

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Cliff Kolber, a passenger aboard the Rotterdam, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the captain announced the ships were approved to dock Thursday afternoon. A passenger aboard the Zaandam said that ship’s captain also announced the news to passengers and the ship began moving just after 3 p.m.

About 4 a.m. Thursday, the ships had reached the waters just off Broward County and traveled north, offshore from Palm Beach County, and then went back south, said Kolber, a resident of Miramar, who is aboard the Rotterdam with his wife. The ships were floating in international waters for hours.

“I had gone outside and it looked like we stopped but the tracker shows we are doing a big loop.”

“We have instructions that local people will walk off and there would be a private car driver for each of us,” he said. “For everyone else, Holland America is arranging buses and charter flights to Australia, Europe.”

Penny Pompei, of Singer Island in Palm Beach County, is on the Zaandam with her husband. She said passengers packed their luggage, which crew members were picking up.

“We’re going around in circles,” she said after lunchtime.

“I can see Fort Lauderdale, I can see the skyline,” she said. She said she wished she could simply have jumped overboard to swim to shore. “It’s very tempting except I know I can’t swim 12 miles. It’s close enough to see and almost you can touch. But we can’t get there.”

Carnival Corp., the parent company of Holland America, and the Unified Command — which includes the Coast Guard and Broward Sheriff’s Office — had been negotiating over the details of letting the Zaandam and the Rotterdam dock. It included logistics such as how the evacuation would work and who would pay for what.

The 21-page agreement promises to not take up more than 15 hospital beds in the county. “This in no way restricts Carnival from utilizing medical resources outside of Broward County,” the agreement reads.

And, “Carnival will advise all passengers who disembark either vessel that they must quarantine at home for 14 days (for Florida residents) or leave Florida immediately and self-isolate for not less than 14 days,” the agreement reads.

The agreement also promises that no passengers with symptoms will be allowed off the ships — and they’ll have their temperature taken by medical staff before being allowed off. About 26 passengers currently have symptoms, according to the documents, and about 50 crew members.

Other stipulations of the agreement: Luggage will be sprayed with disinfectant spray by ship’s housekeeping team before taken off the ships, and then sprayed a second time at the terminals.

Most of the flights are scheduled for Friday — starting with a 10:30 a.m. flight to Toronto — but a flight to Heathrow Airport isn’t leaving until Saturday. There are 226 people who will be on that flight to London.

“We are not moving,” said Valerie Myntti, a passenger from Minnesota aboard the Zaandam, after 8 a.m. “It looks like we are anchored offshore at Fort Lauderdale according to a map on closed circuit TV. We are waiting with bated breath for the final decision.

“I do not think we have been moving for hours. Sorry I am so imprecise. We are in a windowless inside cabin. It is hard to know anything — time of day, where we are — it is disorienting. The captain said we would stay in international waters till a decision was reached.”

After 5 a.m., Cliff Kolber snapped photos on his cellphone of the lights of Broward County, as well as what he could see of the Seminole Hard Rock Guitar Hotel.

“When my feet are on the ground in Broward, I’ll be happy,” Kolber said.

When the ships were still in limbo and not moving, crew members delivered lunch about 1:30 p.m.

Ashok Parmar, stuck inside his room on the Rotterdam with his wife, Dinu, said he didn’t feel like eating the salad, cold cuts and cheese, served with a side of mashed potatoes. The Canadian couple said the crew knocks on the door and leaves the food outside “like a prisoner.” The couple said they just wanted to go home.

“You don’t feel like eating anything because you don’t know when this is going to be over,” Ashok Parmar, of Ontario, said. He has a window in his room, but no balcony.

“I very much want to breathe the air that is outside,” he said.

The Broward Medical Examiner’s Office would only say “we will be going to ship when instructed to do so” to retrieve the bodies.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had been against letting the Zaandam dock, concerned that it would overwhelm South Florida hospitals that already have an influx of seriously ill patients. On Wednesday, he proposed allowing Floridians to disembark from the ship, and said officials were trying to figure out a solution for the other passengers.

“My concern is simply that we have worked so hard to make sure we have adequate hospital space in the event of a COVID-19 surge. We wouldn’t want those valuable beds to be taken because of the cruise ship,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Zaandam was scheduled to dock in Chile for the “half-cruise” part of its South American journey. But it was turned away on March 15.

Then, Panama said it would not permit the ship to cross the Panama Canal to get to the eastern United States, reversing itself.

Numerous other countries refused to assist as fears raged over the new coronavirus.

Four people died aboard the Zaandam, including an American. Two of the deaths were blamed on the coronavirus. A few days ago, Holland America moved more than 800 healthy Zaandam passengers to the Rotterdam ship, helping balance the workload for the crews.

Another cruise ship with sick people on board is planning to disembark in Fort Lauderdale, as the U.S. Coast Guard considers sequestering ships “indefinitely.”

There’s another lingering deal involving a separate ship that wasn’t resolved early Thursday either.

Princess Cruises’ Coral Princess has a “higher-than-normal” number of people with flu-like symptoms and plans to bring them to Port Everglades on Saturday after a service call in Bridgetown, Barbados.

Broward County Commissioner Mark Bogen said there are sick passengers and crew and he is “totally opposed” to allowing the ship into Port Everglades. As county staff works with the cruise line, he said he expects his fellow commissioners to “start raising our voices.”

“Our hospitals are at capacity,” he said. “We have no capacity for sick passengers.”

Bogen said he will suggest rerouting the ship to Tampa, Jacksonville or Cape Canaveral. “They have to go elsewhere,” he said.