2 Crewmembers Airlifted From Celebrity Cruise Ship After Suffering Chemical Burns

The U.S. Coast Guard was called to a Celebrity cruise on Wednesday to medevac two crewmembers from the ship after they suffered chemical burns.

The crewmembers required medical attention on land, according to WAVY, a Fox affiliate out of Portsmouth, Virginia. It was unclear what caused the chemical burns.

The Celebrity Summit ship was located 69 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach when the Coast Guard airlifted the crewmembers from their assigned cruise ship, the news outlet said.

The Coast Guard was dispatched from the air station in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, sending a crew and a physician in an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter to the ship, WVEC, an ABC affiliate out of Norfolk, Virginia, reported.

The injured crewmembers were transported to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk. There were no updates available on their condition.

“The Coast Guard trains daily for situations like this," Ryan Langley, a Fifth District Coast Guard Command Center operations watchstander, told WAVY. "Being that there are so many hazards on the water, we remain always ready so that we can respond effectively to answer the public’s call.”

The 965-foot Celebrity Summit ship can hold 2,218 people and weighs in at 90,940 tons, according to the Celebrity Cruises website. It was inaugurated in October 2001 and updated in March 2019. The maximum cruising speed of the vessel is 24 knots.