Italian cruise ship tally: 11 dead, 21 missing

The cruise ship Costa Ser­ena passes off­shore as its sis­ter ship Costa Con­cor­dia lies on its side off the tiny Tus­can island of Giglio, Italy, Wednes­day, Jan. 18, 2012. The $450 mil­lion Costa Con­cor­dia cruise ship was car­ry­ing more than 4,200 pas­sen­gers and crew when it slammed into a reef Fri­day off the tiny Ital­ian island of Giglio after the cap­tain made an unau­tho­rized maneu­ver. The death toll stands at 11, with 22 peo­ple still miss­ing. (AP Photo/Angelo Carconi)

COLLEEN BARRY, NICOLE WINFIELD

Asso­ci­ated Press

ROME (AP) — The first vic­tim from the Costa Con­cor­dia dis­as­ter was iden­ti­fied Wednes­day — a 38-year-old vio­lin­ist from Hun­gary who had been work­ing as an enter­tainer on the stricken cruise ship.

San­dor Feher’s body was found inside the wreck and iden­ti­fied by his mother, who had trav­eled to the Ital­ian city of Gros­seto, accord­ing to Hungary’s for­eign ministry.

The $450 mil­lion Costa Con­cor­dia cruise ship was car­ry­ing more than 4,200 pas­sen­gers and crew when it slammed into a reef and flopped on its side Fri­day off the tiny Ital­ian island of Giglio after the cap­tain made an unau­tho­rized detour on his route.

Eleven peo­ple have been con­firmed dead so far, but the num­ber of miss­ing dropped to 21 Wednes­day after a Ger­man pas­sen­ger who was listed as miss­ing was found alive back in Ger­many, the Gros­seto prefect’s office reported. Ital­ian offi­cials have only released 27 names so far, includ­ing 12 Ger­mans, six Ital­ians, four French, two Amer­i­cans and one per­son each from Hun­gary, India and Peru.

Jozsef Balog, a pianist who worked with Feher on the ship, told the Blikk news­pa­per that Feher was wear­ing a life­jacket when he decided to return to his cabin to pack his vio­lin. Feher was last seen on deck en route to the area where he was sup­posed to board a lifeboat.

Accord­ing to Balog, Feher helped put life­jack­ets on sev­eral cry­ing chil­dren before return­ing to his cabin.

Oth­ers among the miss­ing included a 5-year-old Ital­ian girl and her father, an Amer­i­can cou­ple from Min­nesota, sev­eral Ger­man retirees and crew mem­bers from Peru and India.

Jerry and Bar­bara Heil of White Bear Lake, Min­nesota, were described by col­leagues as devout Catholics. Sarah Heil, their daugh­ter, told WBBM radio in Chicago that her par­ents had been look­ing for­ward to their 16-day vaca­tion after rais­ing four kids and send­ing them all off to college.

“They never had any money,” Sarah Heil said. “So when they retired, they went trav­el­ing. And this was to be a big deal — a 16-day trip. They were really excited about it.”

Ital­ian res­cue work­ers, mean­while, sus­pended oper­a­tions early Wednes­day after the cruise ship shifted slightly on the rocks near the Tus­can coast, cre­at­ing deep con­cerns about the safety of divers and fire­fight­ers search­ing for the miss­ing. Instru­ments attached to the ship detected the move­ments even though fire­fight­ers who spent the night search­ing the area for the miss­ing could not.

“As a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, we stopped the oper­a­tions this morn­ing, in order to ver­ify the data we retrieved from our detec­tors, and under­stand if there actu­ally was a move­ment, and if there has been one, how big,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Fil­ippo Marini.

By evening, offi­cials still did not have enough data to reas­sure them that the ship had stopped reset­tling. The lat­est vic­tims — five adults — were dis­cov­ered Tues­day after navy divers exploded holes in the hull of the ship to allow eas­ier access.

Con­cor­dia pas­sen­gers around the world were still mak­ing their way home, with con­sis­tent claims that crew mem­bers were ill-prepared to han­dle an emer­gency evacuation.

“The crew mem­bers had no spe­cial­ized train­ing — the secu­rity man dou­bled as the cook and bar­tender, so obvi­ously they did not know what to do,” pas­sen­ger Clau­dia Fehlandt told Chile’s Chan­nel 7 tele­vi­sion after being embraced by rel­a­tives at Santiago’s airport.

“In fact, the lifeboats, even the ones that did get low­ered, they did not know how to lower them and they cut the ropes with axes,” she said.

Much of the focus has been on the cruise ship cap­tain, Francesco Schettino.

In a dra­matic phone con­ver­sa­tion released Tues­day, a coast guard offi­cial was heard order­ing Schet­tino, who had aban­doned the ship with his first offi­cers, back on board to over­see the evac­u­a­tion. But Schet­tino resisted, say­ing it was too dark and the ship was tip­ping dangerously.

“You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me?” the Coast Guard offi­cer shouted as Schet­tino sat safe in a life raft and fran­tic pas­sen­gers strug­gled to escape the list­ing ship. “It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ‘Aban­don ship.’ Now I am in charge.”

The offi­cer con­fronted him with an expletive-laced order to get back on board, which has quickly entered the Ital­ian lex­i­con. The four-word phrase has become a Twit­ter hash­tag and Ital­ian media have shown pho­tos of T-shirts bear­ing the command.

Schet­tino, later in the same exchange, denied hav­ing aban­doned the ship, say­ing that he had tripped and fallen.

“I did not aban­don a ship with 100 peo­ple on board, the ship sud­denly listed and we were thrown into the water,” Schet­tino said, accord­ing to a tran­script pub­lished Wednes­day in the Cor­riere della Sera paper.

Jailed since the acci­dent, Schet­tino was ques­tioned by a judge for three hours Tues­day before the judge ordered him held under house arrest — a deci­sion that fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors are plan­ning to challenge.

Schettino’s lawyer, Bruno Lep­o­ratti, told a news con­fer­ence Wednes­day in Grosetto that the house arrest made sense, given there was no evi­dence the cap­tain intended to flee. He cited the fact that the cap­tain coor­di­nated the evac­u­a­tion from the shore after leav­ing the ship.

“He never left the scene,” Lep­o­ratti said. “There has never been a dan­ger of flight.”

Lep­o­ratti added that Schet­tino was upset by the acci­dent, con­trary to depic­tions in the Ital­ian media that he did not appear to show regret.

“He is a deeply shaken man, not only for the loss of his ship, which for a cap­tain is a grave thing, but above all for what hap­pened and the loss of human life,” the lawyer said.

Crim­i­nal charges includ­ing manslaugh­ter and aban­don­ing ship are expected to be filed by pros­e­cu­tors shortly. Schet­tino faces a pos­si­ble 12 years in prison on the aban­don­ing ship charge alone.

Pre­mier Mario Monti offered his first com­ment on the dis­as­ter Wednes­day, telling a press con­fer­ence in Lon­don that it “could and should” have been avoided.

Monti also thanked the res­i­dents of Giglio, which has a win­ter­time pop­u­la­tion of about 900, for open­ing their doors to the 4,200 refugees who strug­gled ashore with noth­ing and were given clothes, food and shelter.

And he acknowl­edged con­cerns about the 500,000 gal­lons of fuel still aboard the ship.

“Every­body can be assured that the Ital­ian author­i­ties are both tak­ing care of the pre­ven­tion and lim­i­ta­tion of any envi­ron­men­tal neg­a­tive impli­ca­tions of this acci­dent, as well as in the first place pro­vid­ing all the nec­es­sary help to those affected,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Jan 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.