Tahoe Queen returns to Ski Run Marina
The Tahoe Queen was dislodged from a sandbar Aug. 5. Photo/DanThriftPhotography.com
Updated Aug. 5 10:58pm
By Kathryn Reed
The Tahoe Queen returned to Ski Run Marina more than 24 hours after hitting a sandbar on Monday.
The paddle-wheeler ran aground Aug. 4 not long after it left Ski Run Marina for an afternoon scenic tour to Emerald Bay. Instead of a leisurely sightseeing cruise, the 250-plus passengers were stuck off Regan Beach in South Lake Tahoe for several hours before rescue boats were called to ferry them back to the marina.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which has a station in Tahoe City, is in charge of the incident. The local office referred questions to an official in San Francisco who did not return a phone call.
Dave Freirich, spokesman for Aramark – the company that owns the Queen – told Lake Tahoe News, “We are still working with the Coast Guard to free the Queen from the sandbar. When it is safe to transport her to the marina, we will determine if any damage needs to be repaired.” This was two hours before she was back in her home port.
It is not known if the boat sustained any damage.
People who have reservations on the Queen are being rebooked on the M.S. Dixie II, which runs out of Zephyr Cove.
Passengers of the Tahoe Queen were given life jackets to wear on rescue boats; including a child having to wear an adult jacket. Photo/Pedro Martinez
Freirich said company officials don’t recall any other time when an incident like this occurred at Lake Tahoe.
He said the initial delay in calling for help was to give the boat a chance to see if “maneuvers” and other vessels could help dislodge it from the sandbar.
“It was very unorganized. No one took control of anything and no one provided any type of emergency plan and there was no one to maintain order. The crew kept working serving drinks and charging credit cards,” Pedro Martinez of Los Angeles told Lake Tahoe News. “The elderly folks were really scared and some started to almost panic. It was a little intense since it appeared that everything was escalating into a more serious situation than what it first appeared. I began to get concerned thinking that people were going to panic and rush and stampede the exits. I was scared for my children and almost wanted to take charge and direct the crowd since no one was taking charge.”
Aramark officials did not have information on what the official protocols are for such an emergency.
It sounds like there emergency plan was to make sure all 200 or so passengers got drunk enough to not notice they were stuck on a sandbar.
Yes, part of the crew’s emergency protocol was to ensure the credit card machines were still communicating with shore. Never mind calling for help…
When the PR guy admits that there was no safety protocol then there really is a problem. What if the boat needed to evacuate quickly? I bet one will be in place before she sails again, lucky it was a sand bar and not a large rock. By the way nice job of getting the most you can from stranded passengers. Did they get a refund?
I hope the owner of the Tahoe Queen does the right thing by the stranded passengers. A refund, a free trip and whatever else he can afford to bring them back to Tahoe.
You can bet those folks will talk to friends and neighbors when they get back home and will talk about their time on the Tahoe Queen wearing life jackets waiting to be taken ashore by rescue boats.
So heres the deal, I grew up here working in a town that relies on tourisim as our main source of income. My family was in the motel business and I also worked all kinds of jobs where I dealt with out of town visitors all the time ,so I know something about this.
If you want repeat customers to come back to your business, you have to treat them right! My folks did, and it worked for us!!!
I hope The Tahoe Queen does the right thing. OLS
The person quoted above said : ‘ I began to get concerned that people were going to panic and rush and stampede the exits.”
Have any of you given any thought to how irrational this person’s fear was ? No one was in any danger. They were on a large boat surrounded by water, supported underneath by the sand. No one had any exits to rush to. The boat could not sink, even if it had holes in it. If any of you consider this account of the incident is credible, you’re not thinking about what happened. When I read the comments, I concluded that the person making these comments is not in touch with reality. What probably bothered most of these people was the boring delay.
You people who think that this was a dangerous incident are nuts. Now go ahead and attack me with your hate and irrational insults.
Tahoe Pizza Eater:
No insults from me. I totally agree with you. When you run aground on sand the hull is already sitting on the bottom so there’s no chance of sinking. It’s a lake, not the ocean where the tide is going to rise and fall. I don’t have much faith in the leadership of someone saying they began to get concerned thinking that people were going to panic and rush and stampede the exits. And do what—jump overboard?
the person making the comment about being afraid people were going to panic was a passenger, not someone working for Aramark. Aramark handled this terribly.
i would of just hopped off an walked to shore, i swim in waste deep water in the location the queen was all the time. They were in fear their smart phone battery might die and they may have to interact with a real person for a second.
This was a fortunate mishap. While there was no real danger, it did provide an opportunity to show how cavalier Aramark and its employees are about the safety and comfort of passengers.
Fortunately, this time it was a sandbank. Does anyone really feel confident that this captain and crew were/are prepared to deal responsibly with a hull breach, a fire, or a medical emergency onboard? I don’t.
I’m glad this happened. We were considering a trip on this boat for our anniversary, and now we’re not. If the captain can’t navigate along a sandy shore, I certainly don’t trust him to navigate through the rocky mouth of Emerald Bay.
B.C., I thought of that, too — just wading to shore. But tourists don’t know they can do that safely. If we want to attract tourists and keep them coming, we need to put ourselves in their shoes.
How would we feel if something like this happened to us in a place we’d never been before, perhaps in a place where no one speaks our language. Let’s say we’re elderly or we’re parents with young children along. Really picture that, and you can better understand why some might feel panicky.
This certainly is an interesting incident. Clearly it is not likely people were in danger given a grounding in shallow water, but it also seems Aramark did not do much to keep passengers informed of what was going on either time-wise or in terms of what was the issue. The fact that their might not have been a sufficient response to a dangerous situation is a concern – the boat would not have to be much further offshore to be in a real serious predicament.
At the same time, the fact that people have all the attention span of a two year old these days does make one wonder what exactly all the panic was over. All in all, this should be a wake up call to Aramark and also the community, which should realize despite all the LTVA advertising, South Lake Tahoe woefully lags behind in any sort of positive travel experience metric you would want to use. When you have your travel organization sponsoring advertisements using the expression “balls to the wall” – well, what do we expect?
What the blazes does “balls to the wall” even mean??
“balls to the wall”?????
I wasn’t onboard so perhaps I do not know what they experienced, or whether the employees were not as friendly as they could be, but my initial reaction is it is a commentary on our overprotected society that people are whining about how horrible it was to sit on a boat for a few hours looking out over Lake Tahoe. I think the appropriate attitude would be…well, that’s too bad this happened, but we can deal with it. Instead people act like they were in some terrible tragedy and they need to be treated for post traumatic stress disorder and given lots of free drinks. Geez, louise. Lighten up.
Pizza eater obviously was not there has little or no knowledge or training in how people react in strained circumstances when no one is giving them any direction or information. ljames is right on.
The LA passenger who pizza calls irrational was seeing something from the inside, not second guessing.
Of course people would rush the exits if they are scared….no one wants to be INSIDE a boat in trouble. They want to be on top so if necessary they can jump in the water.
No one was apparently addressing anything regarding the situation they were in. Pizza’s shoreside ponderings about sand and can’t sink etc are just uninformed mutterings.
Think about what would have happened if the tiniest bit of smoke came into the cabin even from an innocent source. A galley grill, an overheated gearbox etc. Panic hardly describes the possibility. Over 200 people in the water? You know some would not have made it.
Aramark was totally unprepared for anything other than a normal cruise.
HEY PEOPLE : The crew knew that there was no danger. This was no wake up call. Everyone had life vests under the benches As for the possibility of hitting a big rock; except where the boat passes between the channel markers into Emerald Bay, there are no big rocks along this route. ( rocks are outside the channel markers ) The crew informed the passengers of the circumstances. The attempt to free the hull from the sand was a proper first course of action. The facts were that there was nothing more to do. Aramark should only change two things about what happened, and those are to serve free refreshments and provide refunds. The mistake of going too close to shore is done, and cannot be undone.
You people who are critical of the way this incident was handled are making stupid comments.
OBSERVER : You win the award for being the dumbest person that has commented.
Proper first couse of action is to steer your huge boat to deep water. Second would be clear communication. Pizza eater are you the Captain, first mate, or on the Aramark marketing team?
tPE, the mozzarella is obviously stuck in your frontal lobe once again. observer is so plainly correct that any attempt to discredit his/her comment simply smacks of defending the indefensible – or someone on the inside.
A majority of everyday people are NOT rational in an emergency situation, real or perceived. Add to that an unfamiliar environment and a situation where someone else is in control, and it’s very easy to see how things could have gone bad very quickly.
Hindsight is indeed 20/20, or for some commenting on this story, sausage and pepperoni …
Pizza’s intelligence is clearly demonstrated by what it apparently eats. I know a former captain of the Queen, and he cannot believe the emergency action plan was not put into action to control and direct the passengers, or why the heck she was so close to shore out of the channel. also sounds like some passengers are deliberately making things sound worse than they really were so they can get those lawsuits filed. Really this whole thing is a non story.