6 people dead, captain charged after cruise ship capsized
Posted January 16, 2012 6:21 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Rescue workers continue their search on Monday around the half submerged hulk of a capsized Italian cruise ship for 29 people still missing, more than 48 hours after the huge vessel tilted over after hitting rocks — at least six have been killed and more than 60 injured.
Three people, a South Korean honeymoon couple and a member of the ship’s crew, were rescued on Sunday and police divers also recovered the bodies of two elderly men, still wearing emergency life jackets.
A sixth body, that of an adult male passenger, was found just before dawn on Monday, according to Italian television.
Twenty-five passengers including 10 Germans and four crew members were still unaccounted for from the disaster off Italy’s west coast, officials said Monday afternoon,
The captain of the 114,500-tonne Costa Concordia was arrested on Saturday, accused of manslaughter and abandoning his ship before all of the more than 4,200 passengers and crew had been evacuated.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the captain sailed close to shore so that the head waiter could wave to his family on land.
Investigators are working through evidence from the equivalent of the “black boxes” carried on aircraft to try to establish the precise sequence of events behind the disaster, which occurred in calm seas and clear weather.
“We are trying to abstain from making assumptions as now we have the possibility to consult the “black boxes” of the ship which were found by the coast guard divers, to check and verify the details and to confirm which were exact manoeuvres of the captain of the ship, Captain Schettino,” said a spokesperson for the Port Authority, Filippo Marini, in Porto Stefano.
The disaster occurred when the ship struck a rock as dinner was being served on Friday night, triggering scenes of panic that witnesses said were like the film Titanic with passengers jostling to get on lifeboats and some leaping into the icy sea.
Passengers say there were unexplained delays in organizing the evacuation of those on board and this had resulted in chaos.
“There were ‘dead moments’ with no communication from the moment when the incident occurred, the captain gravely underestimated the gravity of the situation. However, there are two procedures, one civil and one from the penal services which will reconstruct the details of the event and determine what really happened,” says Marini.
Prosecutors accuse Schettino, who has worked for Costa Crociere since 2002 and who was promoted to captain in 2006, of leaving the ship before the evacuation was complete. Coastguard officials say he refused to return to the vessel when asked to.
Schettino has told Italian television the ship hit rocks that were not marked on maps and were not detected by navigation systems. He said the accident occurred some 300 metres from shore.
The vast hulk of the 290-metre-long ship, half submerged and lying on its side, looms over the little port of Giglio, an island in a maritime nature reserve off the Tuscan coast.
A large gash can be seen in its hull but salvage experts said its fuel tanks do not appear to have been damaged, lessening the danger of an oil spill in the pristine waters.
Paolo Tronca, a local fire department official, said the search would go on “for 24 hours a day as long as we have to”.
“One of important aspect is that this is a passenger ship, not a cargo ship, on which the only fuel carried was for the journey and which, at the moment, has not leaked from the ship,” says Marini.
Costa Crociere expressed “deep sorrow” for the disaster. It said all crew had been properly trained in safety procedures and that the ship was fully equipped with life jackets, medical supplies and other safety equipment.
