Dozens of Passengers 'Still Missing' and Three Dead After Luxury Cruise Liner

Dozens of passengers 'still missing' and three dead after luxury cruise liner carrying 4,200 people capsizes off the coast of Italy

Sixty nine people are believed to be missing and three are dead after a packed cruise liner began capsizing off the Italian coast after running aground.

Twenty-four British holidaymakers were on the Costa Concordia which had left port at 7pm for a seven-day Mediterranean Cruise - but within two hours, it ran aground in the sea with a major electrical fault.

The 13 deck liner then began to take on water after hitting rocks creating a 160ft gash in the hull, near the island of Giglio, off the Tuscan coast - two weeks into the Titanic centenary year.

About 4,200 passengers and crew were evacuated but Italian officials said this afternoon 69 had not yet been accounted for, although they warned the passenger list might not be fully up-to-date.


Italian news agency Ansa said 4,165 out of the 4,234 people on-board were safe but did not know the whereabouts of the remaining 69.

Coast guards and divers have spent the morning searching the submerged decks, the BBC said.

The Concordia's grounding should serve as a wake-up call to the shipping industry and those who regulate it, the maritime professionals' union Nautilus International said.

Passengers said the ship had begun to sink so much it was difficult to launch lifeboats, while some said they saw holiday-makers leaping into the water to swim to safety.

At least three bodies have been recovered from the sea. Fourteen people are believed to have minor injuries such as bruising.

The Foreign Office said it was not aware of any injuries or fatalities to Britons. One hundred and twenty nine Americans are believed to have been on board.

Among the dead was a man around age 65, who officials believe may not have been able to withstand the cold of the sea at night.

It is thought that the death toll may still rise and there are reports some people are still not accounted for.

Terrified passengers were ordered to put on life vests and man life boats as the 850ft-long luxury 'floating palace', which costs up to £1,200 a night, began to list heavily to one side by about 20 degrees.

Helicopters plucked to safety some 50 people who were trapped on the liner.

By this morning, the ship was lying virtually flat off the coast, its starboard side submerged in the water.

'We were having dinner aboard when we heard a loud noise, like that of the keel being dragged over something,' passenger Luciano Castro told Italian state radio.

The lights went out 'and there were scenes of panic, glasses falling to the floor,' he said.

Another passenger Mara Parmegiani said 'it was like a scene from the Titanic.'

Passengers complained the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many of them to be released.

The evacuation drill was only scheduled for Saturday afternoon, even though some passengers had already been on board for several days.

Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, said: 'It was so unorganized, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5pm. We had joked what if something had happened today.'

'Have you seen 'Titanic?' That's exactly what it was,' said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean.

They all bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along hallways and stairwells that were nearly vertical, trying to reach rescue boats.

'We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,' her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61, said. 'We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls.'

She choked up as she recounted the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their three-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship lurched to the side and the family found themselves standing on a wall.

Mrs Ananias said: 'I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn't want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn't hold her.

'I thought that was the end and I thought they should be with their baby,' she said.

The family said they were some of the last off the ship, forced to shimmy along a rope down the exposed side of the ship to a waiting rescue vessel.

Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbor of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio.

She was wearing elegant dinner clothes — a cashmere sweater, a silk scarf — along with a large pair of hiking boots, which an islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape, along with her passport, credit cards and phone.

Hammer, 65, said that she was eating her first course, an appetizer of squid, on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise, which was a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.

Suddenly, 'we heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn't anything dangerous,' she said.

The passengers were instructed to put on life jackets and take to the life rafts but, Hammer said, they couldn't get into the boats, because the cruise liner was tilting so much the boats couldn't be lowered into the cold, night sea.

The passengers were eventually rescued by one of several boats in the area that came to their aid.

The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on the tiny island of Giglio, a popular holiday isle about 18 miles off Italy's central west coast.

Those evacuated by helicopter were flown to Grosseto, while others, rescued by local ferries pressed into emergency service, took survivors to the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.

'It was terrible,' Hammer said, as German and Spanish tourists were about to board buses at the port.

Fabio Costa, who worked in a shop on the stricken cruise ship, said a number of people were jumping into the sea to swim ashore.

Describing the moment the boat began to list, he told BBC Breakfast: 'We were all working and all of a sudden we felt the boat hitting something and everything just started to fall, all the glasses broke and everybody started to panic and run.

'We could only feel that the boat had hit something, we had no idea how serious it was until we got out and we looked through the window and we saw the water getting closer and closer. Everything happened really, really fast and we saw the water coming in.'

Mr Costa said that once the emergency alarm was set off people started to panic and push each other in a bid to get into lifeboats.

'A lot of people were falling down the stairs and were hurt because things fell on them,' he added.

He said: 'We just saw a huge rock, that was probably where the ship hit, and people were having huge trouble trying to get on the lifeboats.

'So at that point we didn't know what to do so it took hours for people to get off the ship.

'It was easier for people to jump into the sea because we were on the same level as that water so some people pretty much just decided to swim as they were not able to get on the lifeboats.'

As dawn neared, a painstaking search of the ship's interior was being conducted to see if anyone might have been trapped inside.

Coast Guard Commander Francesco Paolillo said: 'No one is leaning out, shouting, calling that they need help, but until the inspection is completed, we won't know.'

Nautilus International, the union which represents 23,000 ship masters, officers, ratings and other shipping industry staff - said the Italian-flagged cruise ship was the latest in a series to highlight its long-standing concerns over safety.

General Secretary Mark Dickinson said Nautilus is concerned about the 'rapid recent increases in the size of passenger ships' - with the average tonnage doubling over the past decade.

'Many ships are now effectively small towns at sea, and the sheer number of people onboard raises serious questions about evacuation,' Mr Dickinson said.

'Insurers and salvors have also spoken about the way in which the sheer size and scale of such ships presents massive challenges for emergency services, evacuation, rescue, and salvage - and we should not have to wait for a major disaster until these concerns are addressed.'

Mr Dickinson added: 'We believe that more attention needs to be given to such issues as the adequacy of life-saving appliances, and the quality and quantity of crews and their training and experience in operating these vessels and dealing with emergency situations, including evacuation.'

Nautilus says it is essential that inquiries into the Costa Concordia grounding examine reports of an electrical problem onboard and urged investigators to examine human factor issues including seafarers' working hours and adequate manning of the bridge and engine room.

Investigations also need to focus on crew competence and training issues, Mr Dickinson added.

A spokesman for the Passenger Shipping Association said: 'Incidents of this nature are isolated and very rare.'

'Ships' crews undertake rigorous training, drills and scenarios for emergency situations including the evacuation of a vessel.

'The ships themselves comply with stringent regulations and procedures from the governing maritime authorities covering every aspect of their build and operation.

'While the focus should rightly be on attending to the immediate incident at hand there will, of course, be a full and thorough investigation into the causes of this event and the full cooperation of both the company and the wider industry is assured.'

Mr Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear.

He said first alarm went off about 10:30pm, about two hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia, en route to its first port of call, Savona, in northwestern Italy.

He said said the vessel 'hit an obstacle' — it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio — 'ripping a gash 50 meters (160 feet) across' on the left side of the ship, and started taking on water.

The captain then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier.

But after the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Mr Paolillo said.

About 3,200 passengers were on board at the time along with 1,000 crew members. All were evacuated.

By 1.20am local time, this had been virtually completed and officials said that the liner was listing at an angle of 20 degrees but it was not in danger of sinking.

A webcam on the website of Costa Cruises showed the position of the £450million six-year-old Concordia just off the coast near Giglio with a caption reading: 'Data transmission is temporarily suspended.'

A statement in the early hours from Costa Cruises, the company that runs the ship, confirmed that the evacuation of the 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew had begun.

The statement said: 'but the position of the ship, which is worsening, is making more difficult the last part of the evacuation.'

Costa Cruises' statement did not mention any casualties, and said it had not yet determined the cause of the problem.

The company said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.

It said about 1,000 Italian passengers were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.

The Foreign Office said it was working 'urgently' to identify Britons, and a consular team had been sent to Italy.

A spokesman said: 'We are in close contact with the local authorities and are working urgently to identify British nationals involved.

'A consular team from the British Embassy will shortly be in the area to provide consular assistance.'

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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