Situation grim for passengers on fire-damaged Carnival cruise ship

Engineers on the Carnival Splendor have been unable to restore power to the vessel in the wake of Monday's fire, leaving passengers facing a second day without air conditioning, hot food or working toilets.

The 113,000-ton vessel, one of the largest in the Carnival fleet, remains dead in the water off the west coast of Mexico.

"We know this has been an extremely trying situation for our guests and we sincerely thank them for their patience," Carnival president and CEO Gerry Cahill says in a statement. "Conditions on board the ship are very challenging and we sincerely apologize for the discomfort and inconvenience our guests are currently enduring."

Carnival says tugboats currently are en route to the Splendor to tow it to Ensenada, Mexico so that passengers can get off the vessel. The line did not give a timetable for how long the procedure would take.

Carnival says no one was injured in the fire, which occurred early Monday in the Splendor's aft engine room, but the main generators of the ship have been disabled and efforts to restart them have failed. The ship's auxiliary generators are providing power to some critical systems but not to key "hotel" operations of the ship that control the climate, sewage disposal and other functions.