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In July 2006 the vessel undertook its maiden voyage, a seven-day cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, with stops in Italy, France, and Spain. Work has begun to remove the tons of rocky reef embedded into the Concordia cruise ship's hull, off Giglio Island in Italy. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats.
Rock And A Hard Place: What To Do With Concordia
He left about 300 passengers on board the sinking vessel, most of whom were rescued by helicopter or motorboats in the area. Despite receiving its own share of criticism, Costa Cruises and its parent company, Carnival Corporation, did not face criminal charges. 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. Several of the ship’s crew, notably Capt. Francesco Schettino, were charged with various crimes. ROME (AP) — An Italian judge has ordered the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship to stand trial for manslaughter in the vessel’s shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany, which killed 32 people. 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.
Four shipwrecks in five days: Why migrants tragedy keep happening in the Med
Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-metre long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. "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. The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. 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.
Costa Concordia
Cruise Ship's Salvage A Wreck For Italian Island - NPR
Cruise Ship's Salvage A Wreck For Italian Island.
Posted: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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. He appealed the verdict, but it was upheld in May 2017; Schettino began serving his sentence shortly thereafter. In the coming months the team carrying out the salvage operation – Titan Salvage from the United States and the Italian engineering company Micoperi – will have to examine quite how damaged the starboard side of the ship is in order to decide how to proceed. Porcellacchia said that part of the hull looked "pretty bad", which might complicate the attachment of sponsons – large steel boxes – needed for the eventual refloating.
Costa Concordia engineers exhausted and relieved after successful salvage
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. Last January, the captain of the Italian mega-cruise ship Costa Concordia committed an apparent act of maritime bravado a few yards from the shore of a Tuscan island. A later statement from the project engineers said the wreck was "resting safely" on six platforms that have been built 30 metres below sea level. It will remain there throughout the winter while the salvage operation continues.
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. Then the ship rolled again, now listing to the right, and the captain ordered the ship to be abandoned. The findings by the experts, along with descriptions by survivors, are expected to be at the heart of the prosecution’s case. Prosecutors made no immediate comment Wednesday about the judge’s decision to grant a trial. Chief prosecutor Francesco Verusio expressed satisfaction about the judge’s decision to order trial for only the Concordia’s captain.
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. Elizabeth Nanni, of Isola del Giglio Tourist Information, said those who arrived on the island were survivors in a state of shock, ''desperate people looking for each other'' and people suffering from hypothermia after jumping into the sea. "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.
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. In July 2014 the Concordia—outfitted with a number of steel containers serving as flotation devices—was towed to Genoa, Italy, where it was dismantled for scrap. With Giglio Island lying in a protected marine area, environmental issues relating to the Concordia wreck were of particular concern.
A Questionable Evacuation
“Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance. And three giant Costa cruise ships are anchored near La Spezia, "motors running, lights on, and with small crews aboard," Fortune reporter Eric J. Lyman wrote. 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. 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.
On that night, in an effort to entertain the passengers with a close-up view of the island, Capt. Francesco Schettino accidentally rammed the vessel into a rocky reef just a few dozen yards from shore. Thousands of passengers and crew made it to land safely but 32 people died, including a five-year-old girl. The bodies of two people – Maria Grazia Trecarichi, a Sicilian passenger, and Russel Rebello, an Indian waiter – have never been found. Their recovery was a priority of the parbuckling but engineers have not yet seen any sign of their remains in the wreck.
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. Italy will mark the 10th anniversary of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster on Thursday with a daylong commemoration. 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! Few of the 500-odd residents of the fishermen’s village will ever forget the freezing night of Jan. 13, 2012, when the Costa Concordia shipwrecked, killing 32 people and upending life on the island for years. Dozens of cruise ships, out of commission during the pandemic that brought tourism and demand for trips on the massive liners to a halt, have been docked off Italy's coasts for a year and a half.
“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water. GIGLIO PORTO, Italy — The curvy granite rocks of the Tuscan island of Giglio lay bare in the winter sun, no longer hidden by the ominous, stricken cruise liner that ran aground in the turquoise waters of this marine sanctuary ten years ago. Locals are unhappy about unsightly liners marring the seaside views, making constant sound, and the potential for their negative environmental impact on the surrounding towns, according to a Fortune report published Monday.
"There was really a melee there is the best way to describe it," he told Cobiella. "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." Passengers struggled to escape in the darkness, clambering to get to the life boats. 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.
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