How the Wreck of the Costa Concordia Changed an Italian Island The New York Times

Table Of Content

• The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse
• More than 60 people drown after a migrant vessel capsizes off Libya, U.N. says
• Costa Concordia dancer admits affair with captain - video report
• ‘I have lived the most beautiful lives and died the most beautiful deaths’
• Costa Concordia captain to appeal against 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter – video

The boat would stay off the coast of the island for another ten years until being removed in 2014. 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.

What happened to the Costa Concordia? Cruise.Blog - Cruise Blog

What happened to the Costa Concordia? Cruise.Blog.

Posted: Thu, 11 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

Then the ship rolled again, now listing to the right, and the captain ordered the ship to be abandoned. "The boat started shaking. The noise - there was panic, like in a film, dishes crashing to the floor, people running, people falling down the stairs," said survivor Fulvio Rocci. “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.

More than 60 people drown after a migrant vessel capsizes off Libya, U.N. says

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. 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.

Costa Concordia dancer admits affair with captain - video report

Schettino is one of nine people facing charges, although eyewitnesses, leaked audio and video recordings, a pre-trial report and even the liner’s owners, Costa Crociere (a subsidiary of Miami-based Carnival), appeared to put the blame squarely on him. 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. When I got there I found myself with other crew members and passengers on this huge dancefloor. We were expecting some instructions, some kind of explanation, but the ship began to have multiple blackouts and power failures. On the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, the ship's Italian pianist Antimo Magnotta, who is now living and working in London, has relived his terrifying ordeal and told Sky News how he is still tormented by flashbacks from what he witnessed. Ten years on from the tragedy, Antimo Magnotta has revealed how he still has "terrible flashbacks" and can remember people's screams as the enormous vessel tipped over off the coast of Italy.

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

As the Costa Concordia made its final journey out of the port of Giglio, some survivors and families of victims looked on as a final farewell. In the aftermath of the disaster, legal claims mounted against the owner of the ship, Costa Cruises. They included lawsuits by the region of Tuscany and a €189m suit by the island of Giglio, which claimed that the accident and the presence of the downed vessel hurt tourism and the local economy. Even as the crew began to frantically assess the damage and start the emergency diesel generator, Schettino ordered them to tell passengers that the ship had simply suffered an electrical outage and that everything was under control. The same erroneous information was given to the harbour master at Civitavecchia. Instead, he said he did it as a favour to the ship’s head waiter, who was a native of Giglio, and to give his passengers a beautiful view of the island.

Costa Concordia captain to appeal against 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter – video

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. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats. Evacuation was made even more chaotic by the ship listing so far to starboard, making walking inside very difficult and lowering the lifeboats on one side, near to impossible.

Prosecutors blamed a delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. It will also honour the 4,200 survivors and the residents of Giglio who took in passengers and crew, offering clothes and shelter until passengers could return to the mainland. Schettino was convicted of multiple manslaughter as well as abandoning ship after leaving before all the passengers had reached safety. The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had been performing a sail-past salute of Giglio when he steered the ship too close to the island and hit the jagged reef, opening a 230-foot gash in the side of the cruise liner. Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it!

Despite receiving its own share of criticism, Costa Cruises and its parent company, Carnival Corporation, did not face criminal charges. During this time, work also began to remove the vessel in what was the largest maritime salvage operation in history. It was not until September 2013 that the 114,000-ton Concordia was finally righted. The 19-hour process involved specially built underwater platforms, cranes, and some 500 people.

Securing wreck site and protecting environment

But no one came from the bridge, and of course the ship, in the meantime, was still performing this very macabre choreography of slowly capsizing. As workers began to break apart the ship in Genoa, and they discovered the body of Russel Rebello, an Indian waiter. The married commander, now 54, was accompanied by his lover, Domnica Cemortan, a classically trained dancer from Moldova.

The flagship Costa Smeralda set off from the port of Savona after being landbound since December when the Italian government banned cruises due to the coronavirus crisis. 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. "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's very similar to the movie 'Titanic.' People were jumping onto the top of the lifeboats and pushing down women and children to try to get to them." Ten years after the deadly Costa Concordia cruise line disaster in Italy, survivors still vividly remember scenes of chaos they say were like something straight out of the movie "Titanic." Ten years ago the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people and entwining the lives of others forever. After a long forced pause due to the pandemic, cruise lines resumed their activities in 2021.

Dramatic openingSchettino himself has become a lightning rod for international disdain for having left the ship before everyone was evacuated. This was the very beginning of my personal nightmare, because I had to perform a gruelling evacuation of the ship. While the ship was tipping over I was confronted with a portrait of an ongoing tragedy, a grotesque paradox. I was expecting a crew member from the bridge (the room where the ship is commanded) to come downstairs and lead myself and my crew members to our designated life raft. I reached my master station and was in charge of a roll call for 25 crew members to embark on a life raft. It was really unexpected because the conditions at sea meant it made no sense for this to happen.

“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. With Giglio Island lying in a protected marine area, environmental issues relating to the Concordia wreck were of particular concern. The vessel was on the edge of an underwater cliff, leading to worries that the ship might slip and break apart, causing an oil spill. To lessen any potential damage, oil booms were placed around the wreckage, and in February 2012 salvage workers began removing more than 2,000 tons of fuel; the undertaking was completed the following month.

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. Dozens of passengers were taken off a cruise ship in Genoa, Italy, after testing positive for COVID, the operator said. The flagship Costa Smeralda set off from the northwestern port of Savona at 6pm after being landbound since December 20, when the Italian government banned cruises during the holiday season due to the coronavirus crisis. "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."

A massive storm, nicknamed Cleopatra by Italian meteorologists, hit Grosseto a couple of hours after the hearing began, dumping rain on members of the media waiting outside. Over the next few days experts, who were appointed at an earlier hearing in March, will present their analysis of the data retrieved from the black box, audio recordings and other on-board equipment. I took up a new form of self-therapy and started writing, and I would cry sometimes of course. Eventually a little rescue boat was sent for us, and I will always say, jumping in this little rescue boat was like jumping back to life. I knew where the life raft I was supposed to get on was located, and I knew it would now be under water.

Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. 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.