Captain claims rock was not marked, a hundred yards from a lighthouse!

 

 

* Death toll rises to five, confusion about number of missing

 

* South Korean honeymooners and crewmember saved

 

* Captain arrested

 

* Passengers talk of panic and fighting for lifejackets

 

By Gavin Jones and Antonio Denti

 

GIGLIO, Italy, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Divers found the bodies of two elderly men inside a capsized cruiseliner on Sunday, bringing the known death toll from a spectacular accident off Italy's coast to five, with another 70 people injured.

 

Divers and other rescuers were painstakingly checking thousands of cabins on the Italian liner Costa Concordia for 15 people still unaccounted for after the huge vessel foundered and keeled over with more 4,229 passengers and crew on board.

 

A day after the disaster, rescuers plucked a South Korean honeymoon couple and an injured crewmember alive from the wreck, lying on its side close to the beautiful island of Giglio off Italy's west coast, after being holed by a rock on Friday night.

 

The captain of the luxury 114,500-tonne ship, Francesco Schettino, was arrested on charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, Italian police said.

 

Searching the vast ship for survivors was like combing through a small town - but one tilted on its side, largely in darkness and partly submerged.

 

In the early afternoon, scuba divers looking for survivors instead found the bodies of two men at a gathering point in the submerged part of the ship, coastguard officials said.

 

The bodies of two French tourists and a Peruvian crew member were found on Saturday.

 

The discovery of the bodies on Sunday dampened earlier euphoria when a helicopter lifted off injured chief purser Manrico Gianpetroni, hours after rescuers made voice contact with him deep inside the stricken, multi-storey vessel.

 

Gianpetroni, who had a broken leg, was winched up from the ship on a stretcher and taken to hospital.

 

"I never lost hope of being saved. It was a 36-hour nightmare," he told reporters.

 

In the early hours of Sunday rescuers pulled out the two South Koreans from a cabin, after locating them from several decks above. They looked dazed but unharmed as they were brought ashore.

 

By Sunday afternoon, about a quarter of the part of the ship that is still above the waterline had been searched. "This is a floating city and it's very difficult," said Luca Cari, spokesman for firefighters on Giglio.

 

Passengers compared the disaster to the sinking of the Titanic, and described people leaping into the sea and fighting over lifejackets in panic when the ship hit a rock and ran aground as they sat down for dinner on Friday night.

 

The vast hulk of the 290-metre-long ship loomed over the little port of Giglio, a picturesque island in a maritime nature reserve off the Tuscan coast. A large gash was visible in its side.

 

Rescue workers including specialist diving teams faced a complex task as they worked their way through more than 2,000 cabins on the ship - a floating resort that boasted a huge spa, seven restaurants, bars, cinemas and discotheques.

 

Paolo Tronca, a local fire department official, said the search would go on "for 24 hours a day as long as we have to" and that rescue workers were using sniffer dogs in the section of the ship above water.

 

As the search continued, there were demands for explanations of why the vessel had come so close to the shore and bitter complaints about how long it took to evacuate the terrified passengers.

 

State prosecutor Francesco Verusio said investigations might go beyond the captain.

 

"We are investigating the possible responsibility of other people for such a dangerous manoeuvre," he told SkyTG24 television. "The command systems did not function as they should have."

 

He said the ship had come within 150 metres (yards) of the coast, which he called "incredibly close".

 

Agnese Stella, a 72-year-old housewife who has lived on Giglio for 50 years told Reuters: "It came much too close (to shore), it never comes this close normally."

 

 

"UNMARKED" ROCK

 

Magistrates said Schettino abandoned the vessel before all the passengers were taken off.

 

The vessel's operator, Costa Crociere, a unit of Carnival Corp & Plc, the world's largest cruise company, said the Costa Concordia had been sailing on its regular course when it struck a submerged rock.

 

In a television interview, Schettino said the rock was not marked on any maritime charts of the area.

 

After an intense rescue operation throughout the weekend, involving helicopters, ships and lifeboats, many passengers had already left the area. Many were taken to Rome airport for flights home.

 

The ship was involved in an accident on Nov. 22, 2008 when it hit a port wall and was damaged while docking.

 

Local officials expressed concern the ship's fuel, at full load as it had just begun the cruise, could spill into pristine waters off Giglio. So far there was no sign of pollution. Dutch maritime services company SMIT said it had been hired to pump fuel off the ship once the rescue was over.

 

The coast guard says the removal of the 2,380 tonnes of fuel cannot begin until the rescue is complete because the operation could cause the vessel to move or sink further into the water.

 

 

DINNER TIME DISASTER

 

Passengers had just sat down to dinner, a few hours after leaving the port of Civitavecchia near Rome on a week-long cruise to Barcelona and Majorca, when a loud bang interrupted the piano player and the ship began to list.

 

"We heard a loud rumble, the glasses and plates fell from the tables, the ship tilted and the lights went off," said passenger Luciano Castro.

 

"What followed was scenes of panic, people screaming, running around the place. Close to us a five-month pregnant young woman was crying and panicking."

 

The ship was carrying almost a thousand Italians, as well as passengers from Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the United States and other countries. Many were elderly and some were in wheelchairs. It became more and more difficult to lower the lifeboats the more the ship listed.

 

"It was complete panic. People were behaving like animals. We had to wait too long in the lifeboats," said Patrizia Perilli, 47.

 

Passengers said they had been given little or no information immediately after the ship ran aground.

 

"After approximately 20 minutes a voice told us there was a problem with the electricity that they were trying to fix," said Castro.

 

"The ship continued to tilt further, after 15 minutes they said again it was a problem with the electricity, but no one believed it," he said.

 

"Of course panic makes things worse and the crew members struggled to calm down the most active and worried passengers."

The ship was built in 2004-2005 at a cost of 450 million euros ($570.00 million) at Italy's Fincantieri Sestri shipyard.

 

Comments

[freelance writer jobs]

oh my.. so tragic this ship got accident! I can't imagine what is the feelings of all people inside the ship when this happened.