The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans after it ran aground off the coast of Isola del Giglio island, Italy, gashing open the hull and forcing some 4,200 people aboard to evacuate aboard lifeboats to the nearby Isola del Giglio island, early Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. About 1,000 Italian passengers were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.
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A luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, gashing
open the hull and forcing some 4,200 people aboard to evacuate aboard
lifeboats to a nearby island early Saturday. At least three were dead,
the Italian coast guard said.
Three bodies were recovered from the sea, said Coast Guard Cmdr.
Francesco Paolillo. There were reports that three others had died after
the accident late Friday night, but as the hours passed, those reports
were not yet confirmed, he said.
Helicopters plucked to safety some 50 people who were trapped on the
Costa Concordia after the liner listed so badly they couldn't launch
lifeboats, Paolillo told The Associated Press by telephone from his
command in the Tuscan port city of Livorno.
``We were having dinner aboard when we heard a loud noise, like that
of the keel being dragged over something,'' passenger Luciano Castro,
who is a journalist, told Italian state radio early Saturday. The lights
went out ``and there were scenes of panic, glasses falling to the
floor,'' Castro said.
Another passenger on what set out to be an eight-day pleasure cruise
around Mediterranean ports, Mara Parmegiani, also a journalist, told the
ANSA news agency that ``it was like a scene from the Titanic.''
Castro said some passengers told them that some people jumped into
the sea to try to swim to safety on the reefs of nearby Giglio island,
although he didn't see anybody do that. He did say he met one survivor
on land, a a young crewman from Asia, who told him he swam to the reefs.
As dawn neared, a painstaking search of the ship's interior was being
conducted to see if any one might have been trapped inside, Paolillo
said. ``No one is leaning out, shouting, calling that they need help,
but until the inspection is completed, we won't know.''
``There are some 2,000 cabins, and the ship isn't straight,''
Paolillo said, referring to the Concordia's dramatic tilt on its right
side. ``I'll leave it to your imagination to understand how they (the
rescuers) are working as they move through it.''
Some Concordia crew members were still aboard to help the coast guard
rescuers inspect ``every millimeter'' of the ship, he said.
Paolillo said it wasn't immediately known if the dead were passengers
or crew, nor were the nationalities of the victims immediately known.
It wasn't clear how they died.
Some 30 people were reported injured, most of them suffering only
bruises, but at least two people were reported in grave condition.
Paolillo said the Concordia was believed to have set sail with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew members.
Some passengers, apparently in panic, had jumped off the boat into
the sea, a Tuscany-based government official, Grosseto prefect Giuseppe
Linardi, was quoted as saying. Authorities were trying to obtain a full
passenger and crew list from Costa, so they could do a roll call to
determine who might be missing.
The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on
the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, a popular vacation isle about 18 miles
(25 kilometers) 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.
Survivors far outnumbered the island's 1,500 residents, and island
Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an appeal for islanders -- ``anyone with a
roof'' to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.
Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still
unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10:30 p.m. (2130 GMT),
about three 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.
The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in
the Tuscan port of Livorno, 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 (165 feet) across'' on the left side of
the ship, and started taking on water.
The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, 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 onto its right side, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said.
Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, were
taking turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to
safely. A Coast guard member was airlifted aboard the vessel to help
people get aboard a small basket so they could be hoisted up to the
helicopter, said Capt. Cosimo Nicastro, another Coast Guard official.
A statement from Costa Cruises, the company that runs the ship,
confirmed that the evacuation of the 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew had
begun, ``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.
Costa Cruises 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 Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters, ANSA
reported. In 2008, when strong winds buffeted Palermo, the cruise ship
banged against the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered damage but no one
was injured, ANSA
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