Carnival said it will provide 20 charter flights Friday to get disembarked passengers to Houston so they can take other flights home. About 1,500 hotel rooms have been reserved in Mobile and New Orleans.

Sheila Gurganus, general manager of the Mobile cruise terminal, said medical personnel will be on hand to help anyone in need. There were no requests for such aid Tuesday afternoon, she said. Other agencies will help expedite the passengers' return home.

The incident has forced Carnival to cancel the ship's next two departures, refund bookings for those trips and offer those passengers discounts on future cruises.

The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation into the cause of the engine room fire. Because the Carnival Triumph is a Bahamian-flagged vessel, the Bahamas Maritime Authority is the primary investigative agency.

In 2010, the Carnival's cruise ship Splendor lost power after an engine room fire, leaving it drifting off the Pacific coast of Mexico. The USS Ronald Reagan ferried 60,000 pounds of supplies for the ship's passengers and crew as the ship was towed to San Diego.

Cahill told reporters the Splendor and Triumph incidents are very different. The Splendor had an explosion in a diesel generator.

Richard Burke, chairman of the engineering department at the State University of New York's Maritime College, told CNN he had "no reason to believe that Carnival in any way is not a first-class operator. Nor do I believe that their ships are not good ships. I think they are just being unlucky right now."