![Cruise ship runs aground, sinks near Italy]( "Cruise ship runs aground, sinks near Italy")
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.
D'Emilio reported from Rome; contributing to this report were David Stringer in London, Franklin Briceno in Lima, Peru and Curt Anderson in Miami.
EARLIER
Divers searched the submerged part of a luxury cruise liner that went aground off Italy's coast in case any of 70 people unaccounted for might be trapped inside, a coast guard official said Saturday, as passengers described a delayed and terrifying evacuation.
Three bodies were recovered from the sea after the Costa Concordia ran aground off the tiny island of Giglio near the coast of Tuscany late Friday, tearing a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in its hull and sending in a rush of water.
One of the victims was a Peruvian crew member, a diplomat from the South American country said, adding that a Peruvian woman was also missing. The ANSA new agency identified the other two fatalities as French passengers, but didn't cite a source.
Passengers described a scene reminiscent of "Titanic", saying they escaped the ship by crawling along upended hallways, desperately trying to reach safety as the lights went out and plates and glasses crashed. Helicopters whisked some survivors to safety, others were rescued by private boats in the area, and witnesses said some people jumped from the ship into the dark, cold sea.
The ship was lying virtually flat off Giglio's coast, its starboard side submerged in the water and the huge gash showing clearly on its upturned hull.
Passengers complained the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many of them to be released.
Carnival Corp., which owns the cruise line that the ship belongs to, didn't address the allegations in a statement it issued.
"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."
Authorities have been checking names against the passenger list, but have had a hard time accounting for everyone. they still hadn't counted all the survivors by the time they reached the mainland 12 hours later.
An evacuation drill was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, even though some passengers had already been on board for several days.
"It was so unorganized, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5 p.m.," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. "We had joked 'What if something had happened today?'"
"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 on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean. 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 recounted the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship lurched to the side and the family found themselves standing on a wall. "He said 'take my baby,'" mrs. Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand as she teared up. "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.
"I thought that was the end and I thought they should be with their baby," she said.
"I wonder where they are," daughter Valerie whispered.
The family said they were some of the last off the ship, forced to shimmy along a rope down the exposed side of the ship to a waiting rescue vessel below.
Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbor of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio. she was wearing elegant dinner clothes — a gray cashmere sweater, a silk scarf — along with a large pair of hiking boots, which a kind islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape. Left behind in her cabin were her passport, credit cards and phone.
Hammer, 65, told The Associated Press she was eating her first course, an appetizer of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad, on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise, which was a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.
Suddenly, "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.
Several passengers concurred, saying crew members for a good 45 minutes told passengers there was a simple "technical problem" that had caused the lights to go off. Seasoned cruisers, however, 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.
Once there, though, crew members delayed lowering the lifeboats even thought the ship was listing badly, they said.
"We had to scream at the controllers to release the boats from the side," said Mike van Dijk, a 54-year-old from Pretoria, South Africa. "We were standing in the corridors and they weren't allowing us to get onto the boats. it was a scramble, an absolute scramble."
Passengers 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 lurch, as if from a severe steering maneuver, 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, adding that the panicked audience members fled for their cabins as well.
Once at their life boat station, crew members directed passengers to go upstairs from the fourth floor deck; Alan Willits said he refused.
"I said 'no this isn't right.' and I came out and I argued 'When you get this boat stabilized, I'll go up to the fifth floor then," he said. Eventually, his lifeboat was lowered down.
But things didn't improve for passengers once aboard the lifeboats or on land.
"No one counted us, neither in the life boats nor on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French military officer from Marseille. she said there had been no evacuation drill since she boarded in Marseille, France on Jan. 8.
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.
"The ship was doing what it does 52 times a year, going along the route between Civitavecchia and Savona," a shaken-looking Onorato, who is Costa's director general, told reporters on Giglio, a popular vacation isle about 18 miles (25 kilometers) off Italy's central west coast. The captain is an 11-year Costa veteran, he said.
He said Costa was cooperating with Italian investigators to find out what went wrong.
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.
Some 30 people were reported injured, most of them suffering only bruises, but at least two people were reported to be in grave condition. several passengers came off the ferries on stretchers, but it appeared more out of exhaustion and shock than serious injury.
The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on Giglio. those evacuated by helicopter were taken to the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.
Passengers sat dazed in a middle school opened for them, wrapped in wool or aluminum blankets, with some wearing their life preservers and their shoeless feet covered with aluminum foil. Civil protection crews served them warm tea and bread, but confusion reigned supreme as passengers tried desperately to find the right bus to begin their journey home.
Tanja Berto, from Ebenfurth, Austria, was shuttled from one line to another with her mother and 2-year-old son Bruno, trying to figure out how to get back to Savona, where they began their cruise a week ago.
"It's his birthday today," she said of her son, rolling her eyes as she held Bruno and tended to her mother, who had grown faint and was lying on the ground. "Happy birthday, Bruno."
Survivors far outnumbered Giglio's 1,500 residents, and island Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an appeal for islanders — "anyone with a roof" — to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia, en route to its first port of call, Savona, in northwestern Italy.
The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle."
The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier. But after the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said.
Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, took turns airlifting survivors and ferrying them to safely. A coast guard member was airlifted aboard the vessel to help people get aboard a small basket so they could be hoisted up to the helicopter, said Capt. Cosimo Nicastro, another Coast Guard official.
Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, 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 sustained damage but no one was injured, ANSA said.
Frances D'Emilio reported from Rome.
EARLIER
A luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the chaotic evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday. Three bodies were recovered from the sea.
There were reports that three other people had died after the accident late Friday night near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, but those reports were not yet confirmed, Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said.
Twelve hours after the accident, the ship was lying virtually flat, its right side submerged in the water.
Passengers complained the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate the Costa Concordia and that the evacuation drill was only scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Authorities still hadn't counted all the survivors.
"It was so unorganized, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5 p.m.," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. "We had joked what if something had happened today."
Helicopters plucked to safety some 50 people who were trapped on the ship after it listed so badly they couldn't launch lifeboats, Paolillo told The Associated Press in Rome by telephone from his command in the Tuscan port city of Livorno. some survivors were rescued by boats in the area. Coast guard rescuers were continuing to search the ship for passengers.
Passenger Mara Parmegiani, a journalist, told the ANSA news agency that "it was like a scene from the Titanic."
Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbor of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio. she was wearing elegant dinner clothes — a cashmere sweater, a silk scarf — along with a large pair of hiking boots, which a kind islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape, along with her passport, credit cards and phone.
Hammer, 65, told the AP that she was eating her first course, an appetizer of squid, on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise, a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.
Suddenly, "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.
The passengers were then instructed to put on life jackets and taken to the life rafts, but Hammer said they couldn't get into them because the cruise liner was tilting so much the boats couldn't be lowered into the cold sea. The passengers were eventually rescued by one of several boats in the area that came to their aid.
"It was terrible," Hammer said, as German and Spanish tourists were about to board buses at the port.
"No one counted us, neither in the life boats or on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French military officer from Marseille. she said there had been no evacuation drill since she boarded in France on Jan. 8.
As dawn neared, a painstaking search of the 290-meter (950-foot) long ship's interior was being conducted to see if anyone might have been trapped inside, Paolillo said.
"There are some 2,000 cabins, and the ship isn't straight," Paolillo said, referring to the Concordia's dramatic more than 45-degree tilt on its right side. "I'll leave it to your imagination to understand how they (the rescuers) are working as they move through it."
Some Concordia crew members were still aboard to help the coast guard rescuers, he said.
Paolillo said it wasn't immediately known if the dead were passengers or crew, nor were the nationalities of the victims immediately known. it wasn't clear how they died.
Some 30 people were reported injured, most of them suffering only bruises, but at least two people were reported in grave condition.
Paolillo said the Concordia was believed to have set sail with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew members.
Some passengers, apparently in panic, had jumped off the boat into the sea, a Tuscany-based government official, Grosseto prefect Giuseppe Linardi, was quoted as saying. Authorities were trying to obtain a full passenger and crew list from Costa, so they could do a roll call to determine who might be missing.
The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on the tiny island of Giglio, a popular vacation isle about 18 miles (25 kilometers) off Italy's central west coast. those evacuated by helicopter were flown to Grosseto, while others, rescued by local ferries pressed into emergency service, took survivors to the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.
Passengers sat dazed in a middle school opened for them, wrapped in woolen blankets with some wearing their life preservers and their shoeless feet covered with aluminum foil.
Survivors far outnumbered Giglio's 1,500 residents, and island Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an appeal for islanders — "anyone with a roof" — to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.
Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia en route to its first port of call, Savona, in northwestern Italy.
The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" — it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio — "ripping a gash 50 meters (160 feet) across" in the side of the ship, and started taking on water.
The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier.
But after the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said.
Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, were taking turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to safely. A coast guard member was airlifted aboard the vessel to help people get aboard a small basket so they could be hoisted up to the helicopter, said Capt. Cosimo Nicastro, another Coast Guard official.
Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.
It said about 1,000 Italian passengers were on board, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.
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.
D'Emilio reported from Rome.
<a href="http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120114/WIRE/120119730/-1/SPORTS?Title=Cruise-ship-runs-aground-sinks-near-Italytag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120114/WIRE/120119730/-1/SPORTS?Title=Cruise-ship-runs-aground-sinks-near-ItalySat, 14 Jan 2012 20:32:50 GMT">Cruise ship runs aground, sinks near Italy
