News
January 15, 2012
By Frances d'Emilio
Night of chaos, fear after cruise ship ran aground
PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy (AP) -- The first course
had just been served in the Costa Concordia's dining room when the
wine glasses, forks and plates of cuttlefish and mushrooms smashed
to the ground. At the magic show in the theater, the trash cans
tipped over and the theater curtains turned on their side. Then
the hallways turned upside down, and passengers crawled on bruised
knees through the dark. Others jumped alone into the cold Mediterranean
Sea.
The terrifying, chaotic escape from the luxury liner
was straight out of a scene from "Titanic" for many of
the 4,000-plus passengers and crew on the cruise ship, which ran
aground off the Italian coast late Friday and flipped on its side
with a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in its hull. At least three bodies
were recovered. But late Saturday, nearly 24 hours after the capsizing,
rescuers had reason to celebrate: a South Korean couple on their
honeymoon responded in the door-to-door search of cabins and were
brought to safety in good condition, officials said.
Close to 40 others remained unaccounted for.
The Friday the 13th grounding of the Concordia was
one of the most dramatic cruise ship accidents in recent memory.
It immediately raised a host of questions: Why did it hit a reef
so close to the Tuscan island of Giglio? Did a power failure cause
the crew to lose control? Did the captain — under investigation
on manslaughter allegations — steer it in the wrong direction
on purpose? And why did crew members tell passengers they weren't
in danger until the boat was listing perilously to the side?
The delay made lifeboat rescue eventually impossible
for some of the passengers, some of whom jumped into the sea while
others waited to be plucked to safety by helicopters.
"We had to scream at the controllers to release
the boats from the side," said Mike van Dijk, from Pretoria,
South Africa. "It was a scramble, an absolute scramble."
Van Dijk said the boat he was on — on the upended
port side — got stuck along the ship's wall as it came down.
"It was a hell of a sound, the crunching,"
he said.
Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the U.S.-based
cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and
said it was cooperating with the investigation. Carnival Corp. issued
a statement expressing sympathy that didn't address the allegations
of delayed evacuation.
The captain, Francesco Schettino, was detained for
questioning by prosecutors, investigating him for suspected manslaughter,
abandoning ship before all others, and causing a shipwreck, state
TV and Sky TV said. Prosecutor Francesco Verusio was quoted by the
ANSA news agency as saying Schettino deliberately chose a sea route
that was too close to shore.
Schettino's lawyer, Bruno Leporatti told the agency:
"I'd like to say that several hundred people owed their life
to the expertise that the commander of the Costa Concordia showed
during the emergency."
France said two of the victims were Frenchmen; a Peruvian
diplomat identified the third victim as Tomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza,
49, a crewman from Peru. Some 30 people were injured, at least two
seriously.
Late Saturday, firefighters who had been searching
the Costa Concordia for dozens who remained missing heard distinct
shouts, "one in a male voice, other in a female voice"
coming from the cruiser liner, Coast guard officer Marcello Fertitta
said.
They turned out to be a honeymooning South Korean
couple, who were brought out in good condition, Prato fire Cmdr.
Vincenzo Bennardo told The Associated Press from the scene.
A risky search by divers of the sunken, water-filled
half of the ship for the missing was suspended at darkness Saturday
night.
The trapped survivors were found more than 24 hours
after the ship ran aground and lurched violently.
Passengers described a scene of frantic confusion.
Silverware, plates and glasses crashed down from the dining room's
upper floor balcony, children wailed and darkened hallways upended
themselves. Panicked passengers slipped on broken glass as the lights
went out while crew members insisted nothing serious was wrong.
"Have you seen 'Titanic'? That's exactly what
it was," said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los
Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents. They all
bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they
endured along nearly vertical hallways and stairwells, trying to
reach rescue boats.
"We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark,
with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing," her
mother, Georgia Ananias, 61 said. "We could hear plates and
dishes crashing, people slamming against walls."
She choked up as she remembered the moment when an
Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to
keep their balance as the ship listed to the side.
"He said,'Take my baby,'" Georgia Ananias
said, covering her mouth with her hand. "I grabbed the baby.
But then I was being pushed down. I didn't want the baby to fall
down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn't hold her."
Whispered her daughter Valerie: "I wonder where
they are."
The Ananias family was among the last passengers off
the ship, left standing on the upended port side. They were forced
to exit from a still-attached lifeboat that became impossible to
use once the ship began to tip over; so they climbed a ladder dropped
too them off a deck and shimmied down a rope to a waiting rescue
vessel.
"We thought we were dying four times," Valerie
said, recounting the most terrifying moments in their escape.
A top Costa executive, Gianni Onorato, said Saturday
the Concordia's captain had the liner on its regular, weekly route
when it struck a reef. Italian coast guard officials said the circumstances
were still unclear, but that the ship hit an unknown obstacle.
Despite some early reports that the captain was dining
with passengers when his ship crashed into the reef, he was on the
bridge, Onorato said.
"The ship was doing what it does 52 times a year,
going along the route between Civitavecchia and Savona," a
shaken-looking Onorato told reporters on Giglio, a popular vacation
isle off Italy's central west coast.
He said the captain was an 11-year Costa veteran and
that the cruise line was cooperating with Italian investigators
to find out what went wrong.
Malcolm Latarche, editor of maritime magazine IHS
Fairplay Solutions, said a loss of power coupled with a failure
of backup systems could have caused the crew to lose control.
"I would say power failure caused by harmonic
interference and then it can't propel straight or navigate and it
hit rocks," Latarche said.
Many passengers complained the crew didn't give them
good directions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became
clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing
too heavily for many to be released.
Several other passengers said crew members told passengers
for 45 minutes that there was a simple "technical problem"
that had caused the lights to go off.
Seasoned cruisers knew better and went to get their
life jackets from their cabins and report to their "muster
stations," the emergency stations each passenger is assigned
to, they said.
Passengers said they had never participated in an
evacuation drill, although one had been scheduled for Saturday.
The cruise began on Jan. 7.
Miriam Vitale, a hostess on the cruise liner who disembarked
earlier this week in Palermo, told SkyTG24 the ship conducts a drill
every 15 days. She said that since passengers on the Concordia embark
or disembark every day, some passengers could miss it depending
on which day they begin the trip.
Surviving passengers huddled under woolen or aluminum
blankets in a middle school on the Italian mainland of Porto Santo
Stefano, where passengers were ferried early Saturday from Giglio.
Some wore their life preservers, their shoeless feet were covered
with aluminum foil.
Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near
the harbor as she waited for a bus to take her somewhere —
she didn't know where. She wore her gray cashmere sweater and a
silk scarf with a large pair of hiking boats loaned to her by an
islander after she lost her shoes in the scramble. Her passport,
credit cards and phone were left in her cabin.
Hammer, 65, said the ship lurched to the side as she
ate an appetizer of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad on her
first night aboard her first-ever cruise, a gift to her and her
husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.
"We heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down
and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn't anything
dangerous," she said.
Alan and Laurie Willits from Wingham, Ontario, celebrating
their 30th wedding anniversary, said they were watching the magic
show in the ship's main theater when they felt an initial jolt,
as if from a severe steering maneuver. That was followed a few seconds
later by a "shudder" that tipped trash cans over.
The subsequent listing of the ship made the theater
curtains seem like they were standing on their side.
"And then the magician disappeared," Laurie
Willits said.
Miami-based Carnival Corp. issued a brief statement
Saturday.
"Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the
grounding of the Costa Concordia and especially the loved ones of
those who lost their lives. They will remain in our thoughts and
prayers in the wake of this tragic event."
Costa Cruises said about 1,000 Italian passengers
were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French
and about 1,000 crew members. The State Department said about 126
U.S. citizens were onboard.
Coast guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said the exact
circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first
alarm aboard went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours after
the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia
to Savona, in northwestern Italy. No SOS was sent, he told The Associated
Press in a telephone interview.
The vessel "hit an obstacle," that tore
a 50-meter (160 feet) gash in the side of the ship and started taking
on water, Paolillo said. It wasn't clear if the obstacle was a jagged,
rocky reef or something else, he said.
The captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his
ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation
by lifeboat easier.
Five helicopters from the coast guard, navy and air
force took turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying
them to safety.
Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing
on a weeklong cruise across the Mediterranean Sea that began Jan.
7 in Savona with stops at Civitavecchia, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma
de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.
The Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters,
ANSA reported. In 2008, when strong winds buffeted Palermo, the
cruise ship banged against the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered
damage but no one was injured, ANSA said.
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