Coast Guard to Italian captain: Go back aboard!

The cruise ship Costa Con­cor­dia leans on its side Tues­day, Jan. 17, 2012, after run­ning aground on the tiny Tus­can island of Giglio, Italy, on Fri­day evening. Ital­ian naval divers on Tues­day exploded holes in the hull of a cruise ship that grounded near a Tus­can island to speed the search for 29 miss­ing pas­sen­gers and crew while the seas remain rel­a­tively calm. The search inten­si­fied as pros­e­cu­tors pre­pared to ques­tion the cap­tain, who is accused of caus­ing the wreck that left at least six dead by mak­ing a maneu­ver that the Ital­ian cruise oper­a­tor said was “unap­proved and unau­tho­rized.” (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FRANCES D’EMILIO

Asso­ci­ated Press

ROME (AP) — “You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me?” the Coast Guard offi­cer shouted as the cap­tain of the grounded Costa Con­cor­dia sat safe in a life raft and fran­tic pas­sen­gers strug­gled to escape after the ship rammed into a reef off the Tus­can coast.

“It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ‘Aban­don ship.’ Now I am in charge.”

The dra­matic record­ing made pub­lic Tues­day shows Capt. Francesco Schet­tino resisted orders to return to his ship to direct the evac­u­a­tion, say­ing it was too dark and the ship was tip­ping perilously.

The exchange came to light as the death toll nearly dou­bled to 11 after divers pulled the bod­ies of four men and a woman, all wear­ing life vests, from the wreck­age. Some two dozen peo­ple remain missing.

The Costa Con­cor­dia had more than 4,200 pas­sen­gers and crew on board when it slammed into the reef Fri­day off the tiny island of Giglio after Schet­tino made an unau­tho­rized maneu­ver from the ship’s pro­grammed course — appar­ently to show off the lux­ury liner to the island’s residents.

Schet­tino has insisted that he stayed aboard until the ship was evac­u­ated. How­ever, the record­ing of his con­ver­sa­tion with Ital­ian Coast Guard Capt. Gre­go­rio De Falco makes clear he fled before all pas­sen­gers were off — and then defied De Falco’s repeated orders to go back.

“Lis­ten Schet­tino,” De Falco can be heard shout­ing in the audio tape. “There are peo­ple trapped on board. … You go on board and then you will tell me how many peo­ple there are. Is that clear?”

But Schet­tino resisted, say­ing the ship was list­ing and he was with his second-in-command in the lifeboat.

“I am here with the res­cue boats. I am here. I am not going any­where. I am here,” he said. “I am here to coor­di­nate the rescue.”

“What are you coor­di­nat­ing there? Go on board! Coor­di­nate the res­cue from aboard the ship. Are you refus­ing?” came the response.

Schet­tino said he was not refus­ing, but he still did not return to the ship, say­ing at one point: “Do you real­ize it is dark and here we can’t see anything?”

De Falco shouted back: “And so what? You want to go home, Schet­tino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot lad­der and tell me what can be done, how many peo­ple there are and what their needs are. Now!”

The exchange also indi­cates that Schet­tino did not know any­one had died, with De Falco telling him at one point: “There are already bod­ies now, Schettino.”

“How many bod­ies?” Schet­tino asks in a ner­vous tone.

“You are the one who has to tell me how many there are!” De Falco barks in response.

Schet­tino was finally heard on the tape agree­ing to reboard. But the Coast Guard has said he never went back, and police arrested him on land sev­eral hours later.

The audio, first made avail­able on the web­site of the Cor­riere della Sera news­pa­per and authen­ti­cated by the Coast Guard, was broad­cast through­out the day on Ital­ian tele­vi­sion to a stunned nation.

Jailed since the acci­dent, Schet­tino appeared Tues­day before a judge in Gros­seto, where he was ques­tioned for three hours. The judge ordered him held under house arrest, his lawyer, Bruno Lep­o­ratti, told reporters, and later Ital­ian media said he had returned to his home near Naples.

Crim­i­nal charges includ­ing manslaugh­ter and aban­don­ing ship are expected to be filed by pros­e­cu­tors in com­ing days. He faces 12 years in prison for the aban­don­ing ship charge alone.

At the hear­ing, Lep­o­ratti said the cap­tain gave his ver­sion of events, insist­ing that after the ini­tial crash into the reefs he had maneu­vered the ship close to shore in a way that “saved hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of lives.”

The lawyer said urine and hair sam­ples were taken from Schet­tino, appar­ently to deter­mine if he might have con­sumed alco­hol or used drugs before the accident.

Tanned and look­ing younger than his 52 years, Schet­tino has worked for 11 years for the ship’s Ital­ian oper­a­tor, Costa Crociere SpA, achiev­ing the rank of cap­tain in 2006. He hails from Meta di Sor­rento in the Naples area, which pro­duces many of Italy’s ferry and cruise boat cap­tains. He attended the Nino Bixio mer­chant marine school near Sorrento.

The five bod­ies dis­cov­ered Tues­day were adults in their 50s or 60s, each wear­ing the orange vests that pas­sen­gers use, indi­cat­ing they were not crew mem­bers, said a Coast Guard spokesman, Cmdr. Fil­ippo Marini. Their nation­al­i­ties were not imme­di­ately released.

They were dis­cov­ered after Ital­ian naval divers exploded holes in the hull of the grounded cruise ship, try­ing to speed up the search for the miss­ing. Navy spokesman Alessan­dro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the holes would help divers enter the wreck more eas­ily. “We are rush­ing against time,” he said.

Before the grim find­ing, author­i­ties had said 25 pas­sen­gers and four crew mem­bers were miss­ing. They include Amer­i­cans Jerry and Bar­bara Heil of White Bear Lake, Minn., as well as 14 Ger­mans, six Ital­ians, four French, a Hun­gar­ian, an Indian and a Peruvian.

Mediter­ranean waters in the area were rel­a­tively calm Tues­day with waves just a foot high, but they were expected to reach nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters) Wednes­day, accord­ing to mete­o­ro­log­i­cal forecasts.

A Dutch ship­wreck sal­vage firm said it would take its engi­neers and divers two to four weeks to extract the 500,000 gal­lons of fuel aboard the ship. The safe removal of the fuel has become a pri­or­ity sec­ond only to find­ing the miss­ing, as the wreck­age site lies in a mar­itime sanc­tu­ary for dol­phins, por­poises and whales.

Pre­lim­i­nary phases of the fuel extrac­tion could begin as early as Wednes­day if approved by Ital­ian offi­cials, the com­pany said.

Smit, based in Rot­ter­dam, Nether­lands, said no fuel had leaked and the ship’s tanks appeared intact. While there is a risk the ship could shift in larger waves, it has so far been rel­a­tively sta­ble perched on top of rocks near Giglio’s port.

Smit’s oper­a­tions man­ager, Kees van Essen, said the com­pany was con­fi­dent the fuel could safely be extracted using pumps and valves to vac­uum the oil out to wait­ing tanks.

“But there are always envi­ron­men­tal risks in these types of oper­a­tions,” he told reporters.

The com­pany said any dis­cus­sion about the fate of the ship — whether it is removed in one piece or bro­ken up — would be decided by Costa Crociere and its insur­ance companies.

Miami-based Car­ni­val Corp., which owns the Ital­ian oper­a­tor, esti­mated that pre­lim­i­nary losses from hav­ing the Con­cor­dia out of com­mis­sion through 2012 would be between $85 mil­lion and $95 mil­lion, along with other costs. The company’s share price slumped more than 16 per­cent Monday.

Car­ni­val said its deductible on dam­age to the ship was approx­i­mately $30 mil­lion. In addi­tion, the com­pany faces a deductible of $10 mil­lion for third-party per­sonal injury lia­bil­ity claims.

Car­ni­val said other costs related to the ground­ing can’t yet be determined.

Posted by AP News on Jan 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.