Table Of Content
After being momentarily separated from his wife, Smith pushed his way onto a lifeboat, which dangled about 60 feet above the water. Immediately, however, the crew had problems lowering it. “This is the first part where I thought my life was in danger,” Smith goes on. “The lifeboats have to be pushed out and lowered down. We weren’t being lowered down slowly and evenly from both directions.
The 50 best Hollywood books of all time
She said blankets and clothes were provided for those who arrived on the island, while churches and schools were opened to ensure that people had a roof over their head. Cruise ship shop worker Fabio Costa said when people realised there was a serious problem, there were scenes of desperation. "We told the guests everything was ok and under control and we tried to stop them panicking," cabin steward Deodato Ordona recalled. Those on board said the boat suddenly tilted to the left.
Inside Costa Concordia – in pictures
Several of the ship’s crew, notably Capt. Francesco Schettino, were charged with various crimes. A little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats.
Escape: The Wreck of the Costa Concordia, Part 3
Costa Concordia captain hands himself into prison - The Guardian
Costa Concordia captain hands himself into prison.
Posted: Fri, 12 May 2017 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Alaska resident Nate Lukes was with his wife, Cary, and their four daughters aboard the ship and remembers the chaos that ensued as the ship started to sink. Some people decided it was too difficult to get on to a lifeboat and chose to swim, with a number safely reaching the nearby island of Giglio. "Everything happened really fast. Everybody tried to get a life boat and people started to panic. A lot of people were falling down the stairs and some were hurt because things fell on them. Eyewitnesses have described scenes of chaos on board the Italian cruise ship the Costa Concordia, which has run aground off Italy, killing at least five people. Schettino said he had taken the ship so close to land for "commercial reasons" in a bid to please his passengers and those ashore. The vessel’s captain, Francesco Schettino, was arrested on Saturday.
“Then the pilot told me we only had two minutes left—we were running out of fuel—so I said to these people, ‘Don’t move! ’ ” With three passengers now aboard, Nemo 1 wheeled into the night sky and headed to the town of Grosseto to refuel. Its momentum had carried it north along the island’s coastline, past the harbor, then past a rocky peninsula called Point Gabbianara. By 10 P.M., 20 minutes after striking the rock, the ship was heading away from the island, into open water.
He left about 300 passengers on board the sinking vessel, most of whom were rescued by helicopter or motorboats in the area. Schettino was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Despite receiving its own share of criticism, Costa Cruises and its parent company, Carnival Corporation, did not face criminal charges. At the bottom of the rope ladder, boats took turns picking up the exhausted passengers, helping them jump down the last five or six feet to safety.
Evacuation
Earlier, the captain had made an emotional final appeal to the judge on the last day of the 19-month trial. On their fourth trip they lifted an unconscious man into the police launch; this was probably the woman’s husband, Jean-Pierre Micheaud, the night’s first confirmed death. Ahead lay mountainous Giglio, a collection of sleepy villages and vacation homes clustered around a tiny stone harbor, nine miles off the coast of Tuscany. The passengers, whose infections were found through random testing, were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, according to the Port of San Francisco. "I think it’s the panic, the feeling of panic, is what’s carried through over 10 years," Ian Donoff, who was on the cruise with his wife Janice for their honeymoon, told Cobiella. Ten years ago the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people and entwining the lives of others forever.
In July 2013 four crew members and Costa Crociere’s crisis coordinator pled guilty to various charges, including manslaughter. That same month Schettino went on trial after being denied a plea bargain. He was charged with manslaughter as well as causing the wreck and abandoning ship. During the 19-month trial, prosecutors claimed that he was an “idiot,” while Schettino countered that his actions had saved lives and that he was being scapegoated. In addition, he noted the steering error by the helmsman, but a maritime expert testified that regardless of the mistake, the collision was unavoidable. In February 2015 Schettino was convicted on all charges and sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.
‘Nothing left’: After California Yacht Club fire, residents mourn loss of a beloved spot
When he returned for his father, Giovanni, an 85-year-old Sardinian, he had vanished. Masia ran up and down the deck, searching for him, but Giovanni Masia was never seen again. Six hours later the Concordia would be lying on its side in the sea, freezing water surging up the same carpeted hallways that hairdressers and newlyweds were already using to head to dinner. Of the 4,200 people on board, 32 would be dead by dawn.
Then he threw on a coat and raced down the hill toward the port. A few moments later, Pellegrini rounded the mountainside. Far below, just a few hundred yards off Point Gabbianara, was the largest ship he had ever seen, every light ablaze, drifting straight toward the rocks alongside the peninsula. However it was done, the Concordia completed a hairpin turn to starboard, turning the ship completely around. At that point, it began drifting straight toward the rocks. There was a 230-foot-long horizontal gash below the waterline.
The Italian cruise ship ran aground off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after striking an underground rock and capsizing. Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated. An investigation focused on shortcomings in the procedures followed by Costa Concordia's crew and the actions of her captain, Francesco Schettino, who left the ship prematurely.
A few, it appears, perhaps seven or eight, died after jumping into the water, either from drowning or hypothermia. Most, however, were found inside the ship, suggesting they had drowned when the Concordia rolled a little after midnight. Both helicopters were, figuratively and literally, operating in the dark. There was no chance of communication with anyone on board; the only way to assess the situation, in fact, was to lower a man onto the Concordia.
Much of what happened on the night of January 13 can now be told, based on the accounts of dozens of passengers, crew members, and rescue workers. But the one group whose actions are crucial to any understanding of what went wrong—the ship’s officers—has been largely mute, silenced first by superiors at Costa Cruises and now by a web of official investigations. The officers have spoken mainly to the authorities, but this being the Italian justice system, their stories quickly leaked to the newspapers—and not simply, as happens in America, via the utterances of anonymous government officials. In Rome entire transcripts of these interrogations and depositions have been leaked, affording a fairly detailed, if still incomplete, portrait of what the captain and senior officers say actually happened. Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio.
The ship was ripped open when it hit the shore and more than 4,000 passengers and crew were forced into a chaotic evacuation. Investigators had severely criticised his handling of the disaster, accusing him of bringing the 290m-long vessel too close to shore when it struck rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio. Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory. All day Saturday, rescue workers fanned out across the ship, looking for survivors. Sunday morning they found a pair of South Korean newlyweds still in their stateroom; safe but shivering, they had slept through the impact, waking to find the hallway so steeply inclined that they couldn’t safely navigate it.
In a first step to prevent pollution of the shore and assist in a refloat the ship, its oil and fuel tanks were emptied. Rose Metcalf, a dancer who had been performing on the ship, was one of the last people to be winched to safety by a helicopter after clinging to the stricken vessel. Rescue teams searched for survivors and helicopters evacuated the last 50 people on the deck. "Usually there are 700 people on the island at this time of year, so receiving 4,000 people in the middle of the night wasn't easy," she said. "It was difficult to walk. First it moved once, then to the left and then more on the right. The boat was tipping one side. You could see the ship was sinking more and more. In half an hour it sank halfway into the water," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment