Costa Concordia: Italy marks ten years since cruise ship disaster

Table Of Content

• ‘I have lived the most beautiful lives and died the most beautiful deaths’
• Italy's giant cruise wreck begins final voyage as survivors look on
• Japanese navy helicopters each carrying 4 crew members believed crashed in Pacific
• A ‘cold-blooded killer’ called Smiley haunted L.A. for 14 years. How he finally faced justice
• Packed Italian court as captain in Concordia disaster hears evidence
• Criminal proceedings against officers
• Trials

Giglio’s people then lived with the Concordia’s 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) carcass for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap. 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. Most passengers escaped in lifeboats, but evacuation efforts were hampered by the angle of the tilting ship. The coastguard launched boats and helicopters to carry stranded passengers to safety.

‘I have lived the most beautiful lives and died the most beautiful deaths’

Other details emerged at pre-trial hearings, including excerpts of the frantic conversations between the Captain and his crew in the aftermath of the accident, captured by the ship's "black box" voice recorder. As it made its way north-west along the Italian coastline, Captain Francesco Schettino ordered the ship to be steered close to the island of Giglio as a "salute". A decade after that harrowing night, the survivors are grateful to have made it out alive. None of the survivors who spoke with Cobiella have been on a cruise since that day. The calamity caused changes in the cruise industry like carrying more lifejackets and holding emergency drills before leaving port.

Italy's giant cruise wreck begins final voyage as survivors look on

Captain Schettino and the sinking of the Costa Concordia - video report - The Guardian

Captain Schettino and the sinking of the Costa Concordia - video report.

Posted: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Lazaro joined fellow survivors in throwing flowers into the sea at the shipwreck site in a solemn ceremony on Tuesday. But the experts -- two admirals and two engineers -- also note that evacuation drills had not been undertaken by all passengers on the ship and not all crew members understood Italian, the operating language of the liner. It is alleged Schettino was in command when he steered the gigantic ship too close to Giglio coastline, allegedly to perform a maritime salute to grant a favor to the ship’s head master, who was originally from the island. Costa sent representatives to the ceremonies and issued a statement saying the company’s thoughts were with the victims and their relatives. Costa noted that since the disaster, it undertaken the massive operation to right the ship, remove it, and restore the damaged seabed.

Japanese navy helicopters each carrying 4 crew members believed crashed in Pacific

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. “I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats. An MSC spokesperson explained to NPR that the cruise ship is now being moored at the Marittima terminal and has begun passenger operations. A politician with the Italian Left party, Nicola Fratoianni, even went as far as to call cruise ships "steel monsters" which "risk carnage" in the seaside town. The lifeboats wouldn't drop down because the ship was tilted on its side, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the side of the ship for hours in the cold. People were left to clamber down a rope ladder over a distance equivalent to 11 stories.

A ‘cold-blooded killer’ called Smiley haunted L.A. for 14 years. How he finally faced justice

Dramatic openingSchettino himself has become a lightning rod for international disdain for having left the ship before everyone was evacuated. The case of Francesco Schettino, 51, was of such enormous interest that a theater had to be turned into a courtroom in the Tuscan city of Grosseto to accommodate all those who had a legitimate claim to be at the closed-door hearing over the disaster. Ester Percossi recalled being thrown to the ground in the dining room by the initial impact of the reef gashing into the hull “like an earthquake.” The lights went out, and bottles, glasses and plates flew off the tables. “It was right to be here, to pay tribute to those victims, but the primary motivation is to thank and greet the people who helped me that night, from Giglio,” said survivor Luciano Castro. The Dutch salvage firm Smit brought a barge alongside the ship and divers installed external tanks to collect the diesel. More than 2,200 tonnes of fuel was eventually extracted, but the engineers were unable to remove all of it from some of the most inaccessible tanks.

He appealed the verdict, but it was upheld in May 2017; Schettino began serving his sentence shortly thereafter. The Costa Concordia was owned by Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & PLC. When launched in 2005, it was Italy’s largest cruise ship, measuring 951 feet (290 metres) long with a passenger capacity of 3,780; by comparison, the Titanic was 882.5 feet (269 metres) long and could accommodate up to 2,435 passengers. It featured four swimming pools, a casino, and reportedly the largest spa on a ship. In July 2006 the vessel undertook its maiden voyage, a seven-day cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, with stops in Italy, France, and Spain. Costa Concordia disaster, the capsizing of an Italian cruise ship on January 13, 2012, after it struck rocks off the coast of Giglio Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Criminal proceedings against officers

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. The ship's captain Francesco Schettino is on trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all the passengers had been evacuated - even though he has claimed that he fell into a lifeboat.

Enormous MSC Cruise Ship Crashes Into Crowded Venice Port, Injuring at Least Five

GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy (AFP) - Italy's Costa Concordia will set sail on its final voyage on Wednesday as survivors look on, two and a half years after the luxury cruise ship crashed and sank in a nighttime disaster that left 32 people dead. Schettino is accused of manslaughter, causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship while passengers and crew were still aboard. The anniversary comes as the cruise ship industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people to avoid cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the infection risk. After the ship hit the reef, the engine room flooded and generators failed, causing a power outage that sent the ship adrift until it eventually crashed offshore and capsized. Evidence presented at the trial showed Schettino downplayed the severity of the situation in communications with the Coast Guard and delayed an evacuation order, then abandoned ship before all the passengers and crew were off.

Trials

The ship - roughly twice the size of the Titanic - will be dragged up the Corsica channel by two tug boats at a speed of just two knots (3.7 kilometres, 2.3 miles) per hour, and is expected to reach Genoa in four days, weather permitting. “We are losing sight of the victims of this tragedy, but they could line the pockets of the shamed captain,” the member said. An angry member of an Italian consumer association told NBC News it would be raising a formal objection to Schettino’s presence in court. “We are not going to save lives if we don’t change the standards in the whole industry, not only of this particular captain,” he added. The ship was eventually refloated in July 2014 and taken to Genoa, where the scrapping operation is expected to take two years.

Giglio’s vice mayor at the time, Mario Pellegrini, had climbed on board the listing ship that night to help coordinate the rescue, and found sheer chaos in the absence of orders from the captain or crew. He recalled he finally climbed down after the last passengers and crew had been evacuated, at around 6 a.m. Bells rang out earlier Thurday in the same Giglio church that opened its doors that freezing night and took in hundreds of passengers who abandoned ship and reached shore in lifeboats. Some had climbed off the lopsided liner on rope ladders after it flipped onto its side; others were plucked from the decks by rescue helicopters. The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety.

Thirty-two people died after the Costa Concordia cruis ship ran aground with more than 4,000 passengers and crew on 13 January 2012, only hours after leaving the Italian port of Civitavecchia. Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection. The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. 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.

"Everybody was trying to get on the boats at the same time. When people had to get on the lifeboats they were pushing each other. It was a bit chaotic. We were trying to keep passengers calm but it was just impossible. Nobody knew what was going on." 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. Time-lapse video shows the raising of the wrecked Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia from the underwater platform it has been resting on for the past year. Dubbed Italy's "most hated man" by the Italian media after the disaster, he found himself in hot water again on Tuesday after photographs emerged of him partying on the island of Ischia while the final preparations were being made to tow away the wreck.