Cruise ship catastrophe off the coast of Italy

[sayhello]

Anderson Cooper had a maritime lawyer on tonight. He had a copy of the cruise line's eight page contract that passengars sign before sailing. From what he explained because the cruise ship is based in Italy and did not go to a US port the only place the passengars can file a suit is in Genoa, Italy. If hitting the rock was a true accident, they could not sue at all, but because the accident was caused by an intentional act (cruising so near the coast line of that island) they can sue, but only in Genoa.

Believe me, they'll have no trouble getting lawyers to represent the survivors in Genoa. Don't know what that will look like, but lawsuits *will* be filed, I have no doubt.

On NPR they were talking with a former Merchant Marine and he said that since Italy had signed on to the Athens Agreement, the maximum liability the cruise company has is $71,400 per dead passenger.

The US did not sign the Athens agreement.

The maritime lawyer on Anderson Cooper said there are circumstances under which the Athens agreement would not apply, and the deliberate actions of the Captain might fall into that category. I sure hope so!

I hope people aren't blaming the crew. I'm sure they did their best. Once the thing tips, half the lifeboats are under water and no good to anyone, anyway. And the others that were secured with gravity going one way now have to be pried out with gravity working against them. And strong men are pushing and shoving to get their loved ones (and for some, themselves, it has been reported) into the boats. It had to be a mess.

If the crew stayed and tried to help, I think they should be cut all the slack in the world. It's not inappropriate.

The problem, from what I heard, is that it was the cooks, and the entertainers, and the room stewards who were helping them. There were no Officers to be found. I agree, the crew who *did* help were heroes.

Sayhello

 

[mjtm610]

I agree that this disaster in beyond horrible. However, after the worst nightmare you can imagine, a second nightmare sounds like it began.
My disgust (besides the disaster itself) is the response. It doesn't sound like Costa Cruises handled this disaster well at all. They sound like they're more concerned with the ship than the people on board. It doesn't sound like they were at all helpful getting people reconnected, getting blankets, finding them a place to stay, getting them clothes, passports, food, shelter, medical care....the list goes on and on.
Personally, I won't go on a Costa Cruise. I think their response speaks to how they value the lives of their customers.

 

[disneyholic family]

I do not recall any story ever upsetting me so much. Even with the horrors of war, it is war - it is supposed to be horrific. And it mixes with so much anger.

I'm not one of those people who cry all the time and are always bawling about everything they see on TV. But I couldn't help shedding a few tears.

It's all just so disturbingly sad.

i'm exactly the same - i can't stop thinking about what those who didn't make it must have gone through...the horror of it...
if you were on the wrong side of the ship, once it was on its side, there was no way for you to get to the other side....it would be like climbing a mountain...impossible...
and those who were clinging to ropes on the other side of the ship...
can you imagine holding onto a rope in the middle of the night, in terribly cold weather, possibly only dressed in evening clothes?
the missing father and his 5 year old daughter were last seen clinging to ropes....who knows what happened to them? did they slip into the water? did they go back inside because she was freezing to death, and then slip inside? so many many awful stories...the husband who gave his wife his lifevest and drowned...
the honeymooning wife who's missing...
the two men in wheelchairs...
the 25 year old staff member with the beautiful smile....was she trying to help passengers and she and they couldn't make it out?

and those who did make it out....clinging to a rope on the side of the slippery ship for 3.5 hours in the middle of the freezing cold night, not knowing if they're going to survive or not.....i cannot imagine the terror....

 

[lugnut33]

And now this comes out:

"Cruise captain was with dancer as ship hit rocks

A 25-year-old Moldovan dancer not on the passenger list says she was on the bridge of the doomed Costa Concordia when it smacked into rocks near a Tuscan island.

Domnica Cemortan told Romanian TV: “I was with (Capt. Francesco) Schettino. I saw that the captain lost his temper. There were two hours of hell.

She told the Romanian newspaper Adevarul: “He saved many lives.”

Cemortan was on the cruise liner, where she had worked previously, as a birthday present, she said.

The Italian newspaper Il Secolo XIX published photographs of her on the bridge with the captain.

“I stayed on deck until 23:50,” she told Adevarul, which is based in Bucharest where Cemortan now lives. “The horror was that I did not see anything, I could just hear the ship creak and things begin to fall.”

A new audiotape of Schettino released Thursday shows a crew member telling the port authority at 10:12 p.m. last Friday that the problems onboard were only a “blackout.”

That was 30 minutes after the rocks sliced open the side of his 12-deck ship and the electricity went off.

The ship had begun to capsize at 9:50 p.m. and the abandon ship alarm sounded at 10:10 p.m.

“Good evening Costa Concordia, please, do you have problems on board?” an official asked the bridge.

An unidentified member of the crew replied: “We’ve had a blackout, we are checking the conditions on board.”

The official pressed him: “What kind of a problem? Is it just something with the generator? The police have received a phone call from the relatives of a sailor who said that during the dinner everything was falling on his head”

The crew member repeated that there had been a blackout.

A French steward who has returned home told France-2 television, “They asked us to make announcements to say that it was electrical problems and that our technicians were working on it and to not panic.”

Thibault Francois said the captain took too long to react and that eventually his boss told him to start escorting passengers to lifeboats.

“No, there were no orders from the management,” he said.

Schettino has admitted to an Italian judge that he miscalculated when steering the ship close to the island of Giglio to perform a sail-past salute to people onshore, a manoeuvre he said he’d done “three or four” times previously.

“I’m a victim of my own kindness” he said to the judge, according to the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Schettino is under house arrest at his home in Meta near Naples. He could face charges of manslaughter and of abandoning ship.

The 52-year-old captain, who has commanded Costa cruise ships since 2006, resisted repeated orders that night to return to the ship and direct the evacuation.

He has said he stumbled into the lifeboat when the 300-metre liner suddenly listed and was unable to get back to the liner.

 

[kaligal]

“I’m a victim of my own kindness” he said to the judge...

Really? HE is a victim??

And I thought Marky Mark's quote was the most self-centered, delusional one I'd hear this week.

 

[WaltD4Me]

I am speechless everytime something new comes out about this "captain." Just saw a report on CNN that after hitting the rock he ordered dinner. What is wrong with this man? He does a television interview saying that he was last to leave the ship...he had to know that could be disproven. He hasn't shown even a shred of remorse or sadness, 50 years in prison isn't nearly enough, IMHO he is a murderer.

 

[Sammie]

I am speechless everytime something new comes out about this "captain." Just saw a report on CNN that after hitting the rock he ordered dinner. What is wrong with this man? He does a television interview saying that he was last to leave the ship...he had to know that could be disproven. He hasn't shown even a shred of remorse or sadness, 50 years in prison isn't nearly enough, IMHO he is a murderer.

USAToday editorial, called him, the "chicken of the sea".

 

[mommy2allgirls]

USAToday editorial, called him, the "chicken of the sea".

Wow, I might be a bad person because I couldn't help but laugh at this. I hope this so called captain gets what he deserves.

 

[disneyholic family]

how is it that the deputy mayor went on board the ship at 11 PM and worked through the night until 5:30 AM, but there were no officers except for one very young one (mentioned in the BBC article below)

19 January 2012

Costa Concordia: Giglio official 'never saw Schettino'


As the Costa Concordia was sinking, the deputy mayor of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Mario Pellegrini, went on board to join the rescue effort. He told Outlook on the BBC World Service how he reacted when he realised the ship was in trouble.

"I met the mayor and immediately we devised a plan to co-ordinate the evacuation of the people, so I decided to go on a tender and to go on board. My first duty was to look for an officer on the boat in order to co-ordinate the evacuation.

I took the first tender that arrived at the port with the first evacuated passengers. I took this tender all by myself and went on board. I went up and I started looking for an officer.

After 20 minutes I couldn't find anybody. I even went on the higher bridges of the ship and even then I couldn't see anybody.

So I decided to go down again to co-ordinate people and put them in dinghies in order to go on land. At the time the ship was not listing so it wasn't difficult.

There were a lot of people who wanted to help but there was no-one guiding them; there was nobody was directing anything.

There was goodwill by many people but many didn't even speak English, so it was difficult.

People fighting

At the beginning there wasn't much panic, just a lot of confusion. People didn't know what to do but there was no real fear.

Then I went on the right-hand side of the ship and it started tilting towards the sea. Big parts of the ship were going underwater - then panic erupted, people really were scared.

When the boat started listing, all the corridors filled with water. They were like wells and there was a lot of people stuck in these wells.

Using a rope, I started to pull people up. They were crying and were really scared.

It was a purser of the ship who was helping me and we rescued about nine people. Some of them were quite old; some of them were children.

People were fighting with each other in order to get on the rope to climb up. I can't condemn them because the situation was really bad. It was really dramatic.

The doctor also helped me; he was very good and courageous. Then, on the bridge, I came across the only officer I could find. He was young, a second-class officer.

He found a little stepladder to put on the side of the boat which people could climb down.

We were together shoulder to shoulder until 05:30 in the morning. I have to say this young officer was wonderful.

He hadn't been given any orders; he was just following his own orders.

It was very difficult as there was some oil around, so climbing down the steps and on to the ladder was extremely slippery. For children and old people, it was especially difficult.

This officer was very good but he was the only officer I met.

Finger by finger

While I was pulling people out of the upended corridor, one girl started shouting and pulling and we had to take her out by her feet.

A lot of the old people attached themselves to anything they could find and they didn't want to let go so we had to go down and detach them finger by finger.

There was one mother who was holding a baby. I said, 'Give me the child and I will put him on board the dinghy and then I will give you him back'. But the mother didn't want to, she was panicking and wouldn't let go of the baby. It was very difficult to get the baby from her.

There were some good moments too. There was an old woman crying and I went over and hugged her and she was reassured.

The last person we took out was an Asian girl who had a broken leg.

I was afraid that the ship might go under while I was working on it.

By the time I left the ship, I was literally exhausted. In the last moments, when the dinghy down at the sea was full of professional rescuers, I was on the part of the bridge where I had been for quite a long time, holding old people, babies and so on.

Because I was so tired and wasn't concentrating, I fell down and nearly broke my neck.

I never saw the captain; the only officer I saw was the young officer, a boy really. I didn't see anyone else."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16638399

 

[sayhello]

how is it that the deputy mayor went on board the ship at 11 PM and worked through the night until 5:30 AM, but there were no officers except for one very young one (mentioned in the BBC article below)

It was a purser of the ship who was helping me and we rescued about nine people.

This purser, I believe, was the one who broke his leg while helping people, and was one of the last people evacuated off the ship when the coast card did a sweep of the ship.

There were heroes in this situation. Unfortunately, none of them were the senior officers of the ship.

Sayhello0

 

[disneyholic family]

This purser, I believe, was the one who broke his leg while helping people, and was one of the last people evacuated off the ship when the coast card did a sweep of the ship.

There were heroes in this situation. Unfortunately, none of them were the senior officers of the ship.

Sayhello0

the pursor isn't an officer, the pursor is sort of a hotel management person - he's in charge of all the cabin stewards on the ship...he's in his 50's i think the newspaper articles said..

the young officer is referred to by the deputy mayor as a 22 year old...

in any case, here's another BBC video that i found to be the most shocking...
you see hundreds of passengers in their lifejackets at the lifeboat stations and you see a woman crewmember telling them in italian, in a very calm voice, go back to your cabins, everything is fine...etcetc

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16658739

how many people died because of the delayed abandon ship? possibly all of them...

 

[kaligal]

I don't know if this was already discussed, but I love this guy's explanation of why he left the ship...he didn't mean to...he tripped and fell into a lifeboat.

Seriously. I don't know if he's recanted or is sticking to it, but that was his story.

Accidentally fell into a lifeboat. Oops.

Ugh.