News
January 21, 2012
By GAIA PIANIGIANI
Divers Resume Search of Capsized Cruise Ship
GIGLIO, Italy — A week after the Costa Concordia
luxury liner ran aground off the island of Giglio in Tuscany, bodies
were still being retrieved from the wreck that is threatening the
protected environment here.
Raising the death toll to 12 people, a woman’s body, still
wearing a life jacket, was retrieved on Saturday afternoon after
navy divers blasted holes close to a submerged assembly area on
the stern of the cruise ship where a number of bodies had already
been found. After so long in the cold January waters, it is very
unlikely that any of the more than 20 people still unaccounted for
have survived.
“Our aim is to find the missing, to give certainty
about the fate of these people, but it is also a priority to avert
an environmental disaster,” said Franco Gabrielli, the head
of Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, who on Friday was put
in charge of coordinating the response to the Concordia’s
capsizing.
Mr. Gabrielli told reporters Saturday that it was
important to recover the half-million gallons of fuel inside the
ship as soon as possible, adding that a newly appointed scientific
commission would by Sunday evening evaluate whether the search operations
could be carried out simultaneously with the salvage work.
Mr. Gabrielli added that, given the difficult conditions
aboard — corridors and rooms filled with floating objects,
walls where floors should be and corridors becoming more vertical
— exploring just one cabin took about 45 minutes. The requirement
of the search operations — a stable ship, and plenty of time
— conflict with the urgency of removing the fuel and the methods
needed to do so. Experts say safeguarding the fuel, which is at
risk of fouling the pristine Tuscan waters around the island, will
take at least four weeks. Worsening weather and sea conditions in
the next few days worry the workers the most.
“We are quite reassured by the data we are collecting
on the stability of the ship,” Mr. Gabrielli said. “But
this is referred to today. We have to be ready to manage a change
in the weather conditions.”
Crews are also evaluating whether it was possible,
and useful, to anchor the ship to the rocks nearby, to prevent it
from rolling off a rocky ledge and deeper into the sea.
While Mr. Gabrielli spoke to reporters, workers of
Smit, the Dutch company hired to salvage the oil and diesel onboard,
continued preparing pipes and engineering equipment on the Giglio
Porto quay, unloading gray rubber booms used to contain possible
leaks of kitchen oil, cleaning products and other liquids from the
enormous ship.
Smit’s spokesman in Italy, Max Iguera, said
the company was almost ready to begin extraction operations and
was awaiting orders from authorities. Another barge with more equipment
was expected to reach Giglio later on Saturday.
The $563 million ship, owned by Costa Cruises, a subsidiary
of Carnival Corporation, departed from its normal route on Jan.
13 and struck rocks that tore a gash in the hull.
The search of the shipwreck was suspended for most
of Friday, after the wreckage shifted about five inches toward the
open sea. After concluding that the risk to divers had fallen as
the ship seemed to stop its movement, navy crews started blowing
new holes in the hull on Saturday to give divers easier access to
the submerged part of the ship.
Among the most recent items recovered from the ship
were a Madonna and baby Jesus from the ship’s chapel, retrieved
Thursday night and early Friday.
The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, 51,
is under house arrest near Naples as prosecutors prepare formal
charges that are likely to include manslaughter, causing a shipwreck
and abandoning ship. Captain Schettino has been vilified by his
employer and much of the news media for crashing the ship, failing
to notify the coast guard promptly and climbing into a lifeboat
while hundreds of the 4,200 passengers and crew members were still
scrambling to escape.
Captain Schettino’s lawyer has said that his
client saved “hundreds, if not thousands” of lives because
he brought the ship close to shore after it hit a rock.
After initially supporting him, Pier Luigi Foschi,
the chief executive of Costa Cruise, the Carnival Cruise subsidiary,
spoke of “human error,” but also granted legal assistance
to the captain. Later in the week the company suspended Captain
Schettino, withdrew legal support and declared it would be an “injured
party” in the prosecution, a move that would allow it to seek
damages in the case of a guilty verdict.
The captain has told magistrates that he informed
the ship’s owners of the accident immediately, his lawyer
said.
But on Friday, while the company faced growing criticism
for underestimating the scale of the emergency, Mr. Foschi said
on Italian television that Captain Schettino did not provide information
on the gravity of the disaster, either to the company or to the
crew, after the ship struck the rocks. Captain Schettino said only
that he had “problems” on board but did not mention
hitting a reef.
Likewise, Mr. Foschi said crew members were not informed
of the scope of the emergency. In amateur video made public on Friday,
crew members were telling passengers to go to their cabins as late
as 10:25 p.m., more than 30 minutes after the ship had struck the
rocks. The call to abandon ship sounded just before 11 p.m.
An audiotape of the Concordia’s first contact
with maritime authorities following the collision has a Concordia
officer repeatedly saying that the ship had experienced a blackout,
even though it had hit the reef more than half an hour earlier.
In an interview published by La Repubblica, the ship’s
doctor, Sandro Cinquini, recounted the final moments of panic on
the sinking ship in the early morning hours of Jan. 14. He said
he kept calm because he could see the shore nearby, but some passengers
were jumping into the dark waters.
“I am not sure who gave the abandon ship signal
— nobody was following orders or procedures in the end,”
he said. “People had abandoned the ship well before any order.”
Among the missing are two Americans, Gerald and Barbara
Heil, a retired Minnesota couple married for 43 years. Members of
the Heil family published an online statement on Friday thanking
Italian and American authorities for help in trying to locate the
couple.
Sheldon J. Schlesinger, P.A. represents clients throughout
the state of Florida including the cities of Boca Raton, Boynton
Beach, Carol City, Cooper City, Coral Gables, Coral Springs, Davie,
Deerfield Beach, Delray Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Hialeah, Hollywood,
Jupiter, Lake Worth, Miramar, Miami, Oakland Park, Palm Beach, Palm
Beach Gardens, Palm Springs, Pompano Beach, and Rivera Beach
Broward County • Miami-Dade County • Palm Beach
County
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