Captain’s conduct blasted as divers find more dead

Inves­ti­ga­tors approach the lux­ury cruise ship Costa Con­cor­dia which leans on its star­board side after run­ning aground in the tiny Tus­can island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Sun­day, Jan. 15. The Costa Con­cor­dia cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tus­cany, send­ing water pour­ing in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forc­ing the evac­u­a­tion of some 4,200 peo­ple from the list­ing ves­sel early Sat­ur­day, the Ital­ian coast guard said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

GREGORIO BORGIA, NICOLE WINFIELD

Asso­ci­ated Press

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Mar­itime author­i­ties, pas­sen­gers and mount­ing evi­dence pointed Sun­day toward the cap­tain of a cruise liner that ran aground and cap­sized off the Tus­can coast, amid accu­sa­tions that he aban­doned ship before every­one was safely evac­u­ated and was show­ing off when he steered the ves­sel far too close to shore.

Divers search­ing the murky depths of the par­tially sub­merged Costa Con­cor­dia found the bod­ies of two elderly men still in their life jack­ets, bring­ing the con­firmed death toll to five. At least 15 peo­ple were still miss­ing, includ­ing two Americans.

The recov­ered bod­ies were dis­cov­ered at an emer­gency gath­er­ing point near the restau­rant where many of the 4,200 on board were din­ing when the lux­ury liner struck rocks or a reef off the tiny island of Giglio. The Ital­ian news agency ANSA reported the dead were an Ital­ian and a Spaniard.

Still, there were glim­mers of hope: The res­cue of three sur­vivors — a young South Korean cou­ple on their hon­ey­moon and a crew mem­ber brought to shore in a dra­matic air­lift some 36 hours after the ground­ing late Friday.

Mean­while, atten­tion focused on the cap­tain, who was spot­ted by Coast Guard offi­cials and pas­sen­gers flee­ing the scene even as the chaotic and ter­ri­fy­ing evac­u­a­tion was under way.

The ship’s Ital­ian owner, a sub­sidiary of Car­ni­val Cruise lines, issued a state­ment late Sun­day say­ing there appeared to be “sig­nif­i­cant human error” on the part of the cap­tain, Francesco Schet­tino, “which resulted in these grave consequences.”

Author­i­ties were hold­ing Schet­tino for sus­pected manslaugh­ter and a pros­e­cu­tor con­firmed Sun­day they were also inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions the cap­tain aban­doned the stricken liner before all the pas­sen­gers had escaped. Accord­ing to the Ital­ian nav­i­ga­tion code, a cap­tain who aban­dons a ship in dan­ger can face up to 12 years in prison.

A French cou­ple who boarded the Con­cor­dia in Mar­seille, Ophe­lie Gondelle and David Du Pays, told the Asso­ci­ated Press they saw the cap­tain in a lifeboat, cov­ered by a blan­ket, well before all the pas­sen­gers were off the ship.

“The com­man­der left before and was on the dock before every­one was off,” said Gondelle, 28, a French mil­i­tary officer.

“Nor­mally the com­man­der should only leave at the end,” said Du Pays, a police offi­cer who said he helped an injured pas­sen­ger to a res­cue boat. “I did what I could.”

Coast Guard offi­cers later spot­ted Schet­tino on land as the evac­u­a­tion unfolded. The offi­cers urged him to return to his ship and honor his duty to stay aboard until every­one was safely off the ves­sel, but he ignored them, Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Pao­lillo said.

Schet­tino insisted he didn’t leave the liner early, telling Medi­aset tele­vi­sion that he had done every­thing he could to save lives. “We were the last ones to leave the ship,” he said.

Ques­tions also swirled about why the ship had nav­i­gated so close to the dan­ger­ous reefs and rocks that jut off Giglio’s east­ern coast, amid sus­pi­cions the cap­tain may have ven­tured too close while car­ry­ing out a maneu­ver to enter­tain tourists on the island.

The ship’s owner, Costa Crociere SpA, issued a state­ment late Sun­day say­ing it was work­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors to deter­mine “pre­cisely what went wrong aboard the Costa Concordia.”

“While the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing, pre­lim­i­nary indi­ca­tions are that there may have been sig­nif­i­cant human error on the part of the ship’s mas­ter, Cap­tain Francesco Schet­tino, which resulted in these grave con­se­quences,” the state­ment said. “The route of the ves­sel appears to have been too close to the shore, and the captain’s judg­ment in han­dling the emer­gency appears to have not fol­lowed stan­dard Costa procedures.”

Res­i­dents of Giglio said they had never seen the Costa come so close to the dan­ger­ous “Le Scole” reef area.

“This was too close, too close,” said Italo Ari­enti, a 54-year-old sailor who has worked on the Maregiglio ferry between Giglio and the main­land for more than a decade. Point­ing to a nau­ti­cal map, he drew his fin­ger along the path the ship usu­ally takes and the jar­ring one close to shore that it fol­lowed Friday.

The ship was a mere 150 yards (meters) from shore at the time of the ground­ing, ANSA quoted Gros­seto pros­e­cu­tor Francesco Veru­sio as saying.

Schet­tino insisted he was twice as far out and said the ship ran aground because the rocks weren’t marked on his nau­ti­cal charts.

How­ever, he did con­cede he was maneu­ver­ing the ship in “touris­tic nav­i­ga­tion” — imply­ing a route that was a devi­a­tion from the norm and designed to enter­tain the tourists.

“We were nav­i­gat­ing approx­i­mately 300 meters (yards) from the rocks,” he told Medi­aset tele­vi­sion. “There shouldn’t have been such a rock. On the nau­ti­cal chart it indi­cated that there was water deep below.”

Costa cap­tains have occa­sion­ally steered the ship near port and sounded the siren in a spe­cial salute, Ari­enti said. Such a nau­ti­cal “fly-by” was staged last August, prompt­ing the town’s mayor to send a note of thanks to the com­man­der for the treat it pro­vided tourists who flock to the island, local news por­tal GiglioNews.it reported.

But Ari­enti and other res­i­dents said even on those occa­sions, the cruise ship always stayed far off­shore, well beyond the reach of the “Le Scole” reefs.

“Every so often they would do a greet­ing, but not so close — far away, safely,” said res­i­dent Gia­como Dannipale.

Dou­glas Ward, a cruise expert and author of the 2012 Berlitz guide to cruises, said the waters around Giglio are too shal­low for such maneuvers.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Fil­ippo Marini said divers had recov­ered the so-called “black box,” with the record­ing of the nav­i­ga­tional details, from a com­part­ment now under water, though no details were released.

Jor­gen Loren, chair­man of the Swedish Mar­itime Officer’s Asso­ci­a­tion, said the cap­tain clearly devi­ated from the ship’s intended route.

“It is remark­able because weather con­di­tions were good and these cruise ships have the best and most mod­ern tech­ni­cal equip­ment. All con­di­tions were ideal,” he said.

“These are well-known waters, fer­ries pass here every day going back and for­ward to the main­land,” he said.

Mean­while, res­cue work con­tin­ued into the night on the unsub­merged half of the Con­cor­dia, said fire­fight­ers spokesman Luca Cari. Snif­fer dogs were being brought in, although it was unclear if they could adapt to work­ing in an envi­ron­ment where the hor­i­zon­tal became the ver­ti­cal, due to the 90-degree list of the ship.

Marini, the coast guard cap­tain, held out hope there could still be sur­vivors, per­haps holed up in the sec­tion still above water, or that some of the unac­counted pas­sen­gers sim­ply didn’t report their safe arrival on land.

Ear­lier Sun­day, a heli­copter air­lifted a cabin crew mem­ber from the cap­sized hulk just hours after South Korean hon­ey­moon­ers were res­cued from their cabin when fire­fight­ers heard their screams.

A rel­a­tive of the res­cued crew­man told reporters he had sur­vived two nights in dark­ness and with his feet in water.

Besides the two dead dis­cov­ered Sun­day, the bod­ies of three other vic­tims — two French pas­sen­gers and a Peru­vian crew­man — were pulled out of the sea in the hours after the accident.

Sur­vivors described a ter­ri­fy­ing escape that was straight out of a scene from “Titanic.” Many com­plained the crew didn’t give them good direc­tions on how to evac­u­ate and once the emer­gency became clear, delayed low­er­ing the lifeboats until the ship was list­ing too heav­ily for all to be released.

“We were left to our­selves,” preg­nant French pas­sen­ger Isabelle Mou­gin, who injured her ankle in the scram­ble, told the ANSA news agency.

Another French pas­sen­ger, Jeanne Marie de Champs, said that faced with the chaotic scene at the lifeboats, she decided to take her chances swim­ming to shore.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t make the shore, but then I saw we were close enough, I felt calmer,” she told Sky News 24.

Coast Guard diver Majko Aidone, inter­viewed by Sky TG24 TV after his dive, explained that the first task after gain­ing access to a sub­merged space, is to tie down large float­ing objects, like mat­tresses, which could turn into dan­ger­ous obstacles.

Then, in hopes of alert­ing any sur­vivors to their pres­ence, “we make noise,” he said.

Crews in dinghies climbed on board the exposed hull of the ship and touched it, near the site of the 160-foot-long (50-meter-long) gash where water flooded in and caused the ship to top­ple on its side.

Ear­lier Sun­day, at a Mass held in Giglio’s main church, which opened its doors to the evac­uees Fri­day night, altar boys and girls brought up a life vest, a rope, a res­cue hel­met, a plas­tic tarp and some bread.

Don Lorenzo, the parish priest, told the faith­ful that he wanted to make this admit­tedly “dif­fer­ent” offer­ing to God as a mem­ory of the tragedy.

“Our com­mu­nity, our island will never be the same,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Jan 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.