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I began swimming, but every 50 feet I would stop and look back. I could hear the ship creaking and was scared that it would fall on top of me if it capsized completely. I swam for a few minutes and reached the island.” She sat on a wet rock and exhaled. Claudio Masia, a 49-year-old Italian, waiting with his wife, their two children, and his elderly parents, lost patience. “I am not ashamed to say that I pushed people and used my fists to secure a place” for his wife and children, he later told an Italian newspaper. Returning for his parents, Masia had to carry his mother, who was in her 80s, into a boat.
Safety regulations
The 19-hour process involved specially built underwater platforms, cranes, and some 500 people. In July 2014 the Concordia—outfitted with a number of steel containers serving as flotation devices—was towed to Genoa, Italy, where it was dismantled for scrap. “Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance. Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. The blackout after the ship's engine room flooded and its generators failed. Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off.
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Italy investigates fatal cruise ship sinking - Al Jazeera English
Italy investigates fatal cruise ship sinking.
Posted: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Ten years after the deadly Costa Concordia cruise line disaster in Italy, survivors still vividly remember scenes of chaos they say were like something straight out of the movie "Titanic." “It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said. Mr Metcalf, from Dorset, told the BBC his daughter had phoned to say she was safe but that she had feared she would have to jump into the sea.
Costa Concordia captain begins appeal against conviction
It was enormous, just at the surface, crowned with frothing white water; he was so close to Giglio he could see it by the town’s lights. The Concordia first sailed into the Tyrrhenian Sea, from a Genoese shipyard, in 2005; at the time it was Italy’s largest cruise ship. When it was christened, the champagne bottle had failed to break, an ominous portent to superstitious mariners.
The calamity caused changes in the cruise industry like carrying more lifejackets and holding emergency drills before leaving port. With Giglio Island lying in a protected marine area, environmental issues relating to the Concordia wreck were of particular concern. The vessel was on the edge of an underwater cliff, leading to worries that the ship might slip and break apart, causing an oil spill. To lessen any potential damage, oil booms were placed around the wreckage, and in February 2012 salvage workers began removing more than 2,000 tons of fuel; the undertaking was completed the following month. Following the conclusion of the righting operation, the ship was kept on the platform while further inspections were made and the starboard sponsons attached.
The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland. Mr Ordona said his colleagues and passengers were waiting to use lifeboats but the change in the direction the boat was sinking prompted them to seek lifeboats on the other side of the ship. It happened on Friday evening and marked the start of hours of panic among the 4,000 people on board the cruise ship.
Prosecutors had sought a 26-year jail term but the court sentenced Schettino to 10 years for multiple manslaughter, five years for causing the shipwreck and one year for abandoning his passengers. The captain of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia has been found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison. The chief executive of the ship’s owners, Costa Cruises, on Monday blamed human error by Schettino for the disaster. Pier Luigi Foschi told a news conference the company would provide its captain with any assistance he required. “But we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error,” he added.
But when it deviated from its planned path to sail closer to the island of Giglio, the ship struck a reef known as the Scole Rocks. The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger. Costa Concordia was declared a "constructive total loss" by the cruise line's insurer, and her salvage was "one of the biggest maritime salvage operations". On 16 September 2013, the parbuckle salvage of the ship began, and by the early hours of 17 September, the ship was set upright on her underwater cradle. In July 2014, the ship was refloated using sponsons (flotation tanks) welded to her sides, and was towed 320 kilometres (200 mi) to her home port of Genoa for scrapping, which was completed in July 2017.
Regulatory and industry response
Costa Concordia captain Schettino guilty of manslaughter - BBC.com
Costa Concordia captain Schettino guilty of manslaughter.
Posted: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:00:00 GMT [source]
He slammed into a wall about 15 feet down, then tumbled down what felt like half the ship, finally landing, ominously, in seawater up to his neck. He felt a stabbing pain in his left leg; it was broken in two places. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized he was inside the restaurant, now a vast, freezing swimming pool jammed with floating tables and chairs.
The hospitality of the tight-knit community of islanders kicked in, at first to give basic assistance to the 4,229 passengers and crew members who had to be evacuated from a listing vessel as high as a skyscraper. In no time, Giglio residents hosted thousands of journalists, law enforcement officers and rescue experts who descended on the port. In the months to come, salvage teams set up camp in the picturesque harbor to work on safely removing the ship, an operation that took more than two years to complete. Because the Concordia was listing to starboard, it eventually became all but impossible to lower boats from the port side, the side facing open water; they would just bump against lower decks. As a result, the vast majority of those who evacuated the ship by lifeboat departed from the starboard side. By the time Schettino called to abandon ship, roughly 2,000 people had been standing on Deck 4 for an hour or more, waiting.
Airlifted to a mainland hospital, Giampedroni was the last person taken off the ship alive. I larione Dell’Anna, the dapper admiral in charge of Coast Guard rescue operations in Livorno, meets me on a freezing evening outside a columned seaside mansion in the coastal city of La Spezia. Inside, waiters in white waistcoats are busy laying out long tables lined with antipasti and flutes of champagne for a naval officers’ reception. Dell’Anna, wearing a blue dress uniform with a star on each lapel, takes a seat on a corner sofa. During this time, work also began to remove the vessel in what was the largest maritime salvage operation in history. It was not until September 2013 that the 114,000-ton Concordia was finally righted.
Worsening weather and heavy seas earlier made the wreck slip on the rocky underwater slope where it is lodged off the island of Giglio and rescue teams were evacuated. Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off the west coast of Italy, at Giglio island. Rescuers were painstakingly checking thousands of cabins on the Italian liner for 16 people still unaccounted for out of the 4,200 who were on board. As he walked, Giampedroni tapped on the doors now at his feet, listening for responses that never came. He didn’t bother trying any of them; they all opened from the inside. He had just stepped on a door outside the Milano Restaurant when, to his dismay, it gave way.
Before leaving port, Captain Schettino set a course for Savona, on the Italian Riviera, 250 miles to the northwest. As the ship steamed into the Tyrrhenian, Schettino headed to dinner with Cemortan, telling an officer to alert him when the Concordia closed within five miles of the island of Giglio, 45 miles northwest. Later, a passenger would claim he saw Schettino and his friend polish off a decanter of red wine while eating, but the story was never confirmed.
"The boat started shaking. The noise - there was panic, like in a film, dishes crashing to the floor, people running, people falling down the stairs," said survivor Fulvio Rocci. The passenger said people were told there were electrical problems. His lawyers had argued that it was a collective failure of the ship's crew and others should share the blame for the disaster.
The Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground off the west coast of Italy, at Giglio Island on Friday. When the lifeboat was finally stabilized, the crewmen slowly helped the others off the rope. A half-hour or so after his last call from the Coast Guard, a rescue boat plucked Schettino from his rock and ferried him to the harbor. He talked to the police for a bit, then found a priest, who later said the captain, in a daze, cried for a very long time.
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