cruise ship overturned in italy

'We all suffer from PTSD': 10 years after the Costa Concordia cruise disaster, memories remain

GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship's engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia's wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

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“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month  warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

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'We all suffer from PTSD'

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice," Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

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'We did something incredible'

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry's top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary," CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement."

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

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Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

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10 years later, Costa Concordia survivors share their stories from doomed cruise ship

Ten years after the deadly Costa Concordia cruise line disaster in Italy, survivors still vividly remember scenes of chaos they say were like something straight out of the movie "Titanic."

NBC News correspondent Kelly Cobiella caught up with a group of survivors on TODAY Wednesday, a decade after they escaped a maritime disaster that claimed the lives of 32 people. The Italian cruise ship ran aground off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after striking an underground rock and capsizing.

"I think it’s the panic, the feeling of panic, is what’s carried through over 10 years," Ian Donoff, who was on the cruise with his wife Janice for their honeymoon, told Cobiella. "And it’s just as strong now."

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were on board when the ship crashed into rocks in the dark in the Mediterranean Sea, sending seawater rushing into the vessel as people scrambled for their lives.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had been performing a sail-past salute of Giglio when he steered the ship too close to the island and hit the jagged reef, opening a 230-foot gash in the side of the cruise liner.

Passengers struggled to escape in the darkness, clambering to get to the life boats. Alaska resident Nate Lukes was with his wife, Cary, and their four daughters aboard the ship and remembers the chaos that ensued as the ship started to sink.

"There was really a melee there is the best way to describe it," he told Cobiella. "It's very similar to the movie 'Titanic.' People were jumping onto the top of the lifeboats and pushing down women and children to try to get to them."

The lifeboats wouldn't drop down because the ship was tilted on its side, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the side of the ship for hours in the cold. People were left to clamber down a rope ladder over a distance equivalent to 11 stories.

"Everybody was rushing for the lifeboats," Nate Lukes said. "I felt like (my daughters) were going to get trampled, and putting my arms around them and just holding them together and letting the sea of people go by us."

Schettino was convicted of multiple manslaughter as well as abandoning ship after leaving before all the passengers had reached safety. He is now serving a 16-year prison sentence .

It took nearly two years for the damaged ship to be raised from its side before it was towed away to be scrapped.

The calamity caused changes in the cruise industry like carrying more lifejackets and holding emergency drills before leaving port.

A decade after that harrowing night, the survivors are grateful to have made it out alive. None of the survivors who spoke with Cobiella have been on a cruise since that day.

"I said that if we survive this, then our marriage will have to survive forever," Ian Donoff said.

Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here! ) that brings the day's news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and a daily delight right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else. 

10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster is still vivid for survivors

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Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio . But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

A dozen passengers on cruise ship test positive for coronavirus

The passengers, whose infections were found through random testing, were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, according to the Port of San Francisco.

Jan. 7, 2022

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Assn., the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to the Associated Press that passenger and crew safety were the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

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How the Wreck of a Cruise Liner Changed an Italian Island

Ten years ago the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people and entwining the lives of others forever.

By Gaia Pianigiani

GIGLIO PORTO, Italy — The curvy granite rocks of the Tuscan island of Giglio lay bare in the winter sun, no longer hidden by the ominous, stricken cruise liner that ran aground in the turquoise waters of this marine sanctuary ten years ago.

Few of the 500-odd residents of the fishermen’s village will ever forget the freezing night of Jan. 13, 2012, when the Costa Concordia shipwrecked, killing 32 people and upending life on the island for years.

“Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance.

The hospitality of the tight-knit community of islanders kicked in, at first to give basic assistance to the 4,229 passengers and crew members who had to be evacuated from a listing vessel as high as a skyscraper. In no time, Giglio residents hosted thousands of journalists, law enforcement officers and rescue experts who descended on the port. In the months to come, salvage teams set up camp in the picturesque harbor to work on safely removing the ship, an operation that took more than two years to complete.

The people of Giglio felt like a family for those who spent long days at its port, waiting to receive word of their loved ones whose bodies remained trapped on the ship. On Thursday, 10 years to the day of the tragedy, the victims’ families, some passengers and Italian authorities attended a remembrance Mass and threw a crown of flowers onto the waters where the Costa Concordia had rested. At 9:45 p.m., the time when the ship ran aground, a candlelit procession illuminated the port’s quay while church bells rang and ship sirens blared.

What stands out now for many is how the wreck forever changed the lives of some of those whose paths crossed as a result. Friendships were made, business relations took shape and new families were even formed.

“It feels as if, since that tragic night, the lives of all the people involved were forever connected by an invisible thread,” Luana Gervasi, the niece of one of the shipwreck victims, said at the Mass on Thursday, her voice breaking.

Francesco Dietrich, 48, from the eastern city of Ancona, arrived on the island in February 2013 to work with the wreck divers, “a dream job,” he said, adding: “It was like offering someone who plays soccer for the parish team to join the Champions League with all the top teams in the business.”

For his work, Mr. Dietrich had to buy a lot of boat-repair supplies from the only hardware store in town. It was owned by a local family, and Mr. Dietrich now has a 6-year-old son, Pietro, with the family’s daughter.

“It was such a shock for us,” said Bruna Danei, 42, who until 2018 worked as a secretary for the consortium that salvaged the wreck. “The work on the Costa Concordia was a life-changing experience for me in many ways.”

A rendering of the Costa Concordia used by salvage teams to plan its recovery hung on the wall of the living room where her 22-month-old daughter, Arianna, played.

“She wouldn’t be here if Davide hadn’t come to work on the site,” Ms. Danei said, referring to Davide Cedioli, 52, an experienced diver from Turin who came to the island in May 2012 to help right the Costa Concordia — and who is also Arianna’s father.

From a barge, Mr. Cedioli monitored the unprecedented salvage operation that, in less than a day, was able to rotate the 951-foot vessel, partly smashed against the rocks, from the sea bottom to an upright position without further endangering the underwater ecosystem that it damaged when it ran aground.

“We jumped up and down in happiness when the parbuckling was completed,” Mr. Cedioli remembered. “We felt we were bringing some justice to this story. And I loved this small community and living on the island.”

The local council voted to make Jan. 13 a day of remembrance on Giglio, but after this year it will stop the public commemorations and “make it a more intimate moment, without the media,” Mr. Ortelli said during the mass.

“Being here ten years later brings back a lot of emotions,” said Kevin Rebello, 47, whose older brother, Russell, was a waiter on the Costa Concordia.

Russell Rebello’s remains were finally retrieved three years after the shipwreck, from under the furniture in a cabin, once the vessel was upright and being taken apart in Genoa.

“First, I feel close to my brother here,” Kevin Rebello said. “But it is also some sort of family reunion for me — I couldn’t wait to see the Giglio people.”

Mr. Rebello hugged and greeted residents on the streets of the port area, and recalled how the people there had shown affection for him at the time, buying him coffee and simply showing respect for his grief.

“Other victims’ families feel differently, but I am a Catholic and I have forgiven,” Mr. Rebello explained.

The Costa Concordia accident caused national shame when it became clear that the liner’s commander, Francesco Schettino, failed to immediately sound the general alarm and coordinate the evacuation, and instead abandoned the sinking vessel.

“Get back on board!” a Coast Guard officer shouted at Mr. Schettino when he understood that the captain was in a lifeboat watching people scramble to escape, audio recordings of their exchange later revealed. “Go up on the bow of the ship on a rope ladder, and tell me what you can do, how many people are there and what they need. Now!”

The officer has since pursued a successful career in politics, while Mr. Schettino is serving a 16-year sentence in a Roman prison for homicide and for abandoning the ship before the evacuation was completed. Other officials and crew members plea-bargained for lesser sentences.

During the trial, Mr. Schettino admitted that he had committed an “imprudence” when he decided to sail near the island of Giglio at high speed to greet the family of the ship’s headwaiter. The impact with the half-submerged rock near the island produced a gash in the hull more than 70 meters long, or about 76 yards, leading to blackouts on board and water pouring into the lower decks.

Mr. Schettino tried to steer the cruise ship toward the port to make evacuation easier, but the vessel was out of control and began to tip as it neared the harbor, making many lifeboats useless.

“I can’t forget the eyes of children, scared to death, and of their parents,” said Mr. Pellegrini, who had boarded the ship to speak with officials and organize the evacuation. “The metallic sound of the enormous ship tipping over and the gurgling of the sea up the endless corridors of the cruiser.”

Sergio Ortelli, who is still the mayor of Giglio ten years later, was similarly moved. “Nobody can go back and cancel those senseless deaths of innocent people, or the grief of their families,” he said. “The tragedy will always stay with us as a community. It was an apocalypse for us.”

Yet Mr. Ortelli said that the accident also told a different story, that of the skilled rescuers who managed to save thousands of lives, and of the engineers who righted the liner, refloated it and took it to the scrapyard.

While the global attention shifted away from Giglio, residents have stayed in touch with the outside world through the people who temporarily lived there.

For months, the Rev. Lorenzo Pasquotti, who was then a pastor in Giglio, kept receiving packages: dry-cleaned slippers, sweaters and tablecloths that were given to the cold, stranded passengers in his church that night, returned via courier.

One summer, Father Pasquotti ate German cookies with a German couple who were passengers on the ship. They still remembered the hot tea and leftovers from Christmas delicacies that they were given that night.

“So many nationalities — the world was at our door all of a sudden,” he said, remembering that night. “And we naturally opened it.”

Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times.  More about Gaia Pianigiani

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Looking Back: Ten Years After Costa Concordia

Orlando Martinez

• January 14, 2022

Ten years ago on January 13, 2012, Costa Concordia ran aground and capsized on the rocks of Giglio, Italy.

By sunrise the next morning, 32 passengers and crew had lost their lives, and the ship’s master, Francesco Schettino, faced not only questions about what happened but accusations that he abandoned command of the ship while passengers were still in danger.

In the coming years, new safety procedures would be introduced across the cruise industry as a result of that night’s tragedy.

Let’s look back at the events of that fateful and deadly Friday the 13th and their aftermath a decade later..

How did Costa Concordia Sink?

The Costa Concordia left Civitavecchia, Italy at 7 pm local time on a seven-night cruise bound for Savona. About two and a half hours into the voyage, the ship’s Captain, Francesco Schettino, ordered the ship to leave its intended course and head toward the small island of Giglio, Italy to perform what’s known as a “sail-by salute,” a maneuver intended to impress both passengers and local residents by sailing very close to the island.

At 9:45 pm, as the ship sailed perilously close to Giglio, the port side of the ship scraped a rock, breaching the ship’s hull and causing it to lurch violently and be plunged into darkness. The ship’s officers initially only communicated news of the power outage to passengers and the Italian Coast Guard, and assured both that the situation was under control.

Meanwhile, on the bridge and below decks, chaos ensued as officers and crew members tried desperately to contain flooding that ultimately impacted the engine room. A 167-foot-long opening was torn in the hull, and three of the ship’s watertight compartments were breached — a situation that would ultimately doom the vessel.

Over the ensuing hour, Concordia  was free-floating, picked up the wind and tides. The ship was blown further north, and spun around, with the starboard side coming to rest against an underwater rock shelf, which caused the ship to lurch again and begin to roll over on its side.

At about 10:42 pm, Captain Schettino finally called a General Alarm, and a short while later, lifeboats were launched as passengers and crew started abandoning ship in what has been described as a chaotic process. The ship’s increasing list led to difficulty launching lifeboats and placed a large number of the life craft inaccessible or already submerged and unable to be launched.

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Timeline of Costa Concordia Sinking

Over 90 minutes after the first impact with the rocky island shore, Italian Coast Guard rescue teams begin to arrive.

Frustrated by unsuccessful efforts to reach Captain Schettino by radio, Gregorio De Falco, commander of the Livorno coast guard fleet, calls Schettino on his cell phone and is shocked to hear the Captain is on a lifeboat.

Here’s a partial transcript of one of their blistering conversations:

De Flaco: What are you doing Captain?

Schettino: I am here going with the lifeboat. I am here coordinating rescues.

DF: What are you coordinating from there? Schettino? Listen to me Schettino. There are people trapped on board. Now, you go with your lifeboat back on the ship… you tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? … You tell me if there are children, women, or people in need of assistance and tell me the number in each of these categories.

S: Commander, please.

DF: Are you refusing to go back on board, Captain? Tell me the reason why you are not going.

S: Do you realize it’s dark here and we can’t see anything

DF: What, do you want to go home, Schettino? It’s dark so you want to go home? Go back on the ship through the ladder and tell me what we can do. How many people there are and what do they need? Now! Schettino you might have saved yourself from the sea, but this is really bad. I’ll make you go through hell. Go the f –  – k on board!

The Captain defied the order.

By 1 am, the last functional lifeboat pulled away from the ship, leaving over 100 still on board to be rescued by Coast Guard divers and choppers, and, later, by walking down a ladder on the side of the ship, holding hands.

The port side of the ship was nearly horizontal at that point, with some passengers climbing and clinging to the hull awaiting evacuation. The Coast Guard knew that people were falling, jumping or being pushed into the frigid water, an all but certain death sentence for those not able to be rescued or reach shore quickly.

Those lucky enough to make it off the ship were welcomed with open arms by Giglio’s residents who offered warn blankets, food and water, and accommodation in their homes.

As daylight broke, a massive search and rescue operation for about 100 missing passengers and crew grew larger. A week later, 20 people are still unaccounted for, with 12 confirmed to be dead, foreshadowing the final death toll of 32.

The body of one crew member was not recovered until after the ship was salvaged and being scrapped, over two and a half years later.

Schettino’s Fate

In the days following the tragedy, Captain Schettino was placed under house arrest, charged with manslaughter, abandoning the ship, and causing a shipwreck.

Rumors that the married 51-year-old Captain was entertaining a young, alleged mistress on the bridge, Moldovan dancer Domnica Cemortan, when the ship ran aground, took over the tabloid newspapers and Twitter.

Reports indicated the young woman was sailing as a guest of the captain and was not on passenger manifests. When audiotapes of Schettino’s conversation with De Falco of the Coast Guard were released, public sentiment in Italy turned further against the Captain.

In July 2013, Schettino’s trial began and was under intense media scrutiny. A key question at trial was who ordered the ship to sail close to Giglio: was it Costa Cruises leadership, or did the ‘rogue’ Captain Schettino make the call?

During testimony, Schettino admitted he did not inform the company of the deviation from the ship’s course, as it was not an official order.

Facing charges of abandoning the ship, Schettino claimed during the trial that he tripped and fell into a lifeboat and was forced to leave the ship. Video of him entering the lifeboat leisurely contradicts his assertion.

Schettino’s trial lasted 19 months, and he was ultimately sentenced to 16 years and one month of prison time. His appeal was not successful.

Five other crew members who had a role in the sail-by or who otherwise did not take appropriate action to prevent the tragedy took plea bargains for manslaughter but ultimately avoided prison time.

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The Cruise Industry Refocuses on Safety

In the aftermath of Costa Concordia, both regulators and major players in the cruise industry revised safety guidelines within months, aiming to prevent a similar incident in the future.

Among the first changes implemented was making the muster drill mandatory for all passengers prior to the ship setting sail. Previously, passengers could muster up to 24 hours after boarding, which means some passengers who boarded Concordia in Civitavecchia on January 13 may not have completed their drill, meaning they did not know what to do or where to report in the event of an emergency.

In Italy, government officials instituted a “no salute” decree shortly after the incident, impacting navigation procedures in and around Venice.

Shipbuilders and cruise lines have made changes in ship design and operation to better accommodate evacuations under different contingencies.

Around the world, ports have assessed their ability to respond to a large-scale, mass-casualty like the Costa Concordia grounding and are better prepared in the event of an emergency.

Though cruise bookings dropped in the immediate aftermath of the Costa Concordia tragedy, they quickly recovered as images of the grounded ship faded from TV screens and newspaper pages.

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Costa Concordia: Ten years on pianist recalls terrifying escape from the capsized cruise liner

Ten years on from the tragedy, Antimo Magnotta has revealed how he still has "terrible flashbacks" and can remember people's screams as the enormous vessel tipped over off the coast of Italy.

Thursday 13 January 2022 17:06, UK

On 13 January 2012, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia capsized off the coast of Tuscany after hitting a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Francesco Schettino, the captain of the cruise liner, was jailed for 16 years for multiple manslaughter after the disaster that left 32 people dead.

On the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, the ship's Italian pianist Antimo Magnotta, who is now living and working in London, has relived his terrifying ordeal and told Sky News how he is still tormented by flashbacks from what he witnessed.

I was working in a very elegant bar at the back of the ship called Bar Vienna. I remember it was a beautiful night, a starry night, the sea was very calm and quiet.

Then all of a sudden the ship suddenly swerved and started tilting. It was really unexpected because the conditions at sea meant it made no sense for this to happen.

I thought to myself - "did we hit a whale or a giant monster or something?".

I fell over and the piano started drifting on stage. I left the bar and found myself stumbling along sloping corridors with passengers and crew members. I was heading to the centre of the ship where there would be more balance.

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When I got there I found myself with other crew members and passengers on this huge dancefloor. We were expecting some instructions, some kind of explanation, but the ship began to have multiple blackouts and power failures.

The ship was performing some very strange movements, it was tilting on one side and then slowly titling on the other side, I was thinking to myself - "what is this?".

Passengers and crew members were screaming and calling out names. We couldn't see each other in the darkness.

It was quite cinematic I must say, it looked like a David Lynch film actually.

Finally, after more than an hour, the emergency signal on board was sounded.

I was a pianist, but I was also a crew member, and I had been trained to carrying out certain duties in an emergency.

I reached my master station and was in charge of a roll call for 25 crew members to embark on a life raft. I remember four people on my list were missing.

I was expecting a crew member from the bridge (the room where the ship is commanded) to come downstairs and lead myself and my crew members to our designated life raft.

But no one came from the bridge, and of course the ship, in the meantime, was still performing this very macabre choreography of slowly capsizing.

While the ship was tipping over I was confronted with a portrait of an ongoing tragedy, a grotesque paradox.

It was like being inside a cabinet of horrors. I mainly remember the sounds - there was this cacophony from the bowels of the ship. People were screaming.

I describe the ship in this moment as being like a swan in agony. It was suffering.

I eventually saw a crew member dressed all in white carrying a box of walkie talkies. I asked him what was going on.

He whispered: "Don't you know? We hit a rock, and this caused a massive leak on the side of the ship."

He was very agitated, he was running on adrenaline, and said: "You know what, the best suggestion would be for you to run for your life, and if you can, abandon the ship."

I thought this must be some kind of joke, but then he just vanished.

Everyone was really panicking and end up scattering all around.

This was the very beginning of my personal nightmare, because I had to perform a gruelling evacuation of the ship.

I knew where the life raft I was supposed to get on was located, and I knew it would now be under water.

I was 41 at the time and said to myself I can't die, this must be a joke.

But I started thinking about my daughter and this triggered a reaction in me, so I started climbing on some metallic bars, some ladders, pipes, whatever I could find in my way.

It took some time, but I found myself on the flank of the ship outside, facing the dark sea, holding onto a winch, a crane, I was holding on to this rope like I was clinging on to life itself.

All I had to do was just wait to be rescued, It was difficult because it was pitch dark, the most difficult thing to do was to make myself visible.

This lasted pretty much four hours.

The ship was more or less on it side by this point, breaching at a very dramatic angle, maybe 80 to 85 degrees, if not more.

It was like the carcass of a stranded whale. I could feel and hear the death rattle of the ship.

When I was on the flank of the ship I felt something is deteriorating, disintegrating, my image, my story, was fading away, it was vanishing, "I can't die," I said to myself.

I was not alone of course, there was a bunch of between 35 to 40 people around me, passengers and crew members.

I could see rescue boats and there was very frantic activity in the water. Helicopters were hovering above but they didn't seem to see us.

Eventually a little rescue boat was sent for us, and I will always say, jumping in this little rescue boat was like jumping back to life.

It was 3am, more than five hours after the ship hit the rock, that the rescue boat dropped me off at Giglio Island.

It was like celebrating a second birthday, it was the beginning of my second life.

Unfortunately, later on, I learned that two fellow musicians had lost their lives. My friend, a Hungarian violinist, who lost his life, had just gone down to his cabin.

I just thought to myself what if it had been the other way round?

This has haunted me for a long time.

In the aftermath of the disaster I was devastated and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

I had mental scars still lingering, survivor's guilt and chronic insomnia. I couldn't play the piano anymore. I had a stone in my chest and not a heart.

I took up a new form of self-therapy and started writing, and I would cry sometimes of course.

It was a way to express myself and my anger.

These days I feel much better and I play the piano in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Now I am feeling much better, but still I have terrible flashbacks and insomnia - my sleep is always interrupted.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• What Is Cinema?

Another Night to Remember

At the Italian port of Civitavecchia, 40 miles northwest of Rome, the great cruise ships line the long concrete breakwater like taxis at a curb. That Friday afternoon, January 13, 2012, the largest and grandest was the Costa Concordia, 17 decks high, a floating pleasure palace the length of three football fields. It was a cool, bright day as the crowds filed on and off the ship, those who had boarded at Barcelona and Marseilles heading into Rome for sightseeing while hundreds of new passengers pulled rolling bags toward the *Concordia’*s arrival terminal.

Up on the road, a writer from Rome named Patrizia Perilli stepped from a chauffeur-driven Mercedes and marveled at the ship’s immensity. “You could see it even before you entered the port; it was a floating monster,” she recalls. “Its size made me feel secure. It was sunny, and its windows were just sparkling.”

Inside the terminal, newcomers handed their luggage to the Indian and Filipino pursers. There was a welcome desk for an Italian reality show, Professione LookMaker, filming on board that week; among those arriving were 200 or so hairdressers from Naples and Bologna and Milan, all hoping to make it onto the show. As they chattered, flashed their passports, and boarded, then slowly filtered throughout the ship, they thought it all grand: 1,500 luxury cabins, six restaurants, 13 bars, the two-story Samsara Spa and fitness center, the three-story Atene Theatre, four swimming pools, the Barcellona Casino, the Lisbona Disco, even an Internet café, all wrapped around a dramatic, nine-story central atrium, itself a riot of pink, blue, and green lights.

Some of the hundred or so Americans on board weren’t so wowed. One likened wandering the Concordia to getting lost inside a pinball machine. “It kind of reminded me of old Vegas, you know?” says Benji Smith, a 34-year-old Massachusetts honeymooner, who had boarded at Barcelona with his wife, along with two of her relatives and two of their friends, all from Hong Kong. “Everything was really gaudy, lots of fancy blown glass in different colors. The entertainment kind of reinforced the old-Vegas thing, aging singers performing solo on a keyboard with a drum track.”

There were just over 4,200 people aboard the Concordia as it eased away from the breakwater that evening, about a thousand crew members and 3,200 passengers, including nearly a thousand Italians, hundreds of French, British, Russians, and Germans, even a few dozen from Argentina and Peru. Up on Deck 10, Patrizia Perilli stepped onto her balcony and daydreamed about sunbathing. As she began to unpack in her elegant stateroom, she glanced over at her boyfriend, who was watching a video on what to do if they needed to abandon ship. Perilli teased him, “What would we ever need that for?”

As the world now knows, they needed it desperately. Six hours later the Concordia would be lying on its side in the sea, freezing water surging up the same carpeted hallways that hairdressers and newlyweds were already using to head to dinner. Of the 4,200 people on board, 32 would be dead by dawn.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia is many things to many people. To Italians, who dominated the ship’s officer ranks and made up a third of its passengers, it is a national embarrassment; once the pinnacle of Mediterranean hedonism, the Concordia was now sprawled dead on the rocks in a cold winter sea.

But the *Concordia’*s loss is also a landmark moment in naval history. It is the largest passenger ship ever wrecked. The 4,000 people who fled its slippery decks—nearly twice as many as were aboard the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912—represent the largest maritime evacuation in history. A story of heroism and disgrace, it is also, in the mistakes of its captain and certain officers, a tale of monumental human folly.

“This was an episode of historic importance for those who study nautical issues,” says Ilarione Dell’Anna, the Italian Coast Guard admiral who oversaw much of the massive rescue effort that night. “The old point of departure was the Titanic. I believe that today the new point of departure will be the Costa Concordia. There has never been anything like this before. We must study this, to see what happened and to see what we can learn.”

Much of what happened on the night of January 13 can now be told, based on the accounts of dozens of passengers, crew members, and rescue workers. But the one group whose actions are crucial to any understanding of what went wrong—the ship’s officers—has been largely mute, silenced first by superiors at Costa Cruises and now by a web of official investigations. The officers have spoken mainly to the authorities, but this being the Italian justice system, their stories quickly leaked to the newspapers—and not simply, as happens in America, via the utterances of anonymous government officials. In Rome entire transcripts of these interrogations and depositions have been leaked, affording a fairly detailed, if still incomplete, portrait of what the captain and senior officers say actually happened.

Captain, My Captain

The Concordia first sailed into the Tyrrhenian Sea, from a Genoese shipyard, in 2005; at the time it was Italy’s largest cruise ship. When it was christened, the champagne bottle had failed to break, an ominous portent to superstitious mariners. Still, the ship proved a success for its Italian owner, Costa Cruises, a unit of the Miami-based Carnival Corporation. The ship sailed only in the Mediterranean, typically taking a circular route from Civitavecchia to Savona, Marseilles, Barcelona, Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily.

In command on the bridge that night was 51-year-old Captain Francesco Schettino, today a figure of international contempt. Dashing and deeply tanned, with lustrous black hair, Schettino had joined Costa as a safety officer in 2002, been promoted to captain in 2006, and since September had been on his second tour aboard the Concordia. Among the officers, he was respected, though the retired captain who had mentored him later told prosecutors he was a bit too “exuberant” for his own good. Despite being married, Schettino had a lady friend at his side that evening, a comely 25-year-old off-duty hostess named Domnica Cemortan, from Moldova. Though she would later become an object of intense fascination in the press, Cemortan’s role in events that night was inconsequential.

Before leaving port, Captain Schettino set a course for Savona, on the Italian Riviera, 250 miles to the northwest. As the ship steamed into the Tyrrhenian, Schettino headed to dinner with Cemortan, telling an officer to alert him when the Concordia closed within five miles of the island of Giglio, 45 miles northwest. Later, a passenger would claim he saw Schettino and his friend polish off a decanter of red wine while eating, but the story was never confirmed. Around nine Schettino rose and, with Cemortan in tow, returned to the bridge.

Ahead lay mountainous Giglio, a collection of sleepy villages and vacation homes clustered around a tiny stone harbor, nine miles off the coast of Tuscany.

The *Concordia’*s normal course took it through the middle of the channel between Giglio and the mainland, but as Schettino arrived, it was already veering toward the island. The ship’s chief maître d’, Antonello Tievoli, was a native of Giglio and had asked the captain to perform a “salute,” essentially a slow drive-by, a common cruise-industry practice intended to show off the ship and impress local residents. Schettino had consented, in part because his mentor, Mario Palombo, lived there, too. Palombo had performed several salutes to Giglio, Schettino at least one.

As the ship made its approach, Tievoli, standing on the bridge, placed a telephone call to Palombo. The retired captain, it turned out, wasn’t on Giglio; he was at a second home, on the mainland. After some chitchat, Tievoli handed the telephone to the captain, which, Palombo told prosecutors, caught him off guard. He and Schettino hadn’t talked in at least seven years; Schettino hadn’t bothered to call when Palombo retired. “The call surprised me,” Palombo said. “I was even more surprised when Schettino asked me about the depth of the seabed in front of Giglio Island, the harbor area, specifying that he wanted to pass at a distance of 0.4 nautical miles [around 800 yards]. I answered that in that area the seabeds are good, but considering the winter season”—when few people were on the island—“there was no reason to go at close range, so I invited him to make a quick greeting and to honk the horn and remain far from shore. I want to clarify that I said, verbatim, ‘Say hi and stay away.’ ”

Just then the phone went dead. It may have been the very moment Schettino saw the rock.

Not until the ship had closed within two miles of the island, Schettino’s officers told prosecutors, did the captain take personal control of the ship. As Schettino recalled it, he stood at a radar station, in front of the broad outer windows, affording him a clear view of Giglio’s lights. An Indonesian crewman, Rusli Bin Jacob, remained at the helm, taking orders from the captain. The maneuver Schettino planned was simple, one he had overseen many, many times, just an easy turn to starboard, to the right, that would take the Concordia parallel to the coastline, dazzling the island’s residents with the length of the fully lit ship as it slid past. In doing so, however, Schettino made five crucial mistakes, the last two fatal. For one thing, the Concordia was going too fast, 15 knots, a high speed for maneuvering so close to shore. And while he had consulted radar and maps, Schettino seems to have been navigating largely by his own eyesight—“a major mistake,” in one analyst’s words. His third error was the bane of every American motorist: Schettino was talking on the phone while driving.

Schettino’s fourth mistake, however, appears to have been an amazingly stupid bit of confusion. He began his turn by calculating the distance from a set of rocks that lay about 900 yards off the harbor. What he failed to notice was another rock, nearer the ship. Giving orders to Bin Jacob, Schettino eased the Concordia into the turn without event. Then, coming onto a new, northerly course just over a half-mile from the harbor, he saw the rock below, to his left. It was enormous, just at the surface, crowned with frothing white water; he was so close to Giglio he could see it by the town’s lights.

He couldn’t believe it.

“Hard to starboard!” Schettino yelled.

It was an instinctive order, intended to steer the ship away from the rock. For a fleeting moment Schettino thought it had worked. The *Concordia’*s bow cleared the rock. Its midsection cleared as well. But by turning the ship to starboard the stern swung toward the island, striking the submerged part of the rock. “The problem was that I went to starboard trying to avoid it, and that was the mistake, because I should not have gone starboard,” Schettino told prosecutors. “I made an imprudent decision. Nothing would have happened if I had not set the helm to starboard.”

“Hard to port!” Schettino commanded, correcting his mistake.

A moment later, he shouted, “Hard to starboard!”

And then the lights went out.

It was 9:42. Many of the passengers were at dinner, hundreds of them in the vast Milano Restaurant alone. A Schenectady, New York, couple, Brian Aho and Joan Fleser, along with their 18-year-old daughter, Alana, had just been served eggplant-and-feta appetizers when Aho felt the ship shudder.

“Joan and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, ‘That’s not normal,’ ” recalls Aho. “Then there was a bang bang bang bang . Then there was just a great big groaning sound.”

“I immediately felt the ship list severely to port,” Fleser says. “Dishes went flying. Waiters went flying all over. Glasses were flying. Exactly like the scene in Titanic. ”

“I took the first bite of my eggplant and feta,” Aho says, “and I literally had to chase the plate across the table.”

“Suddenly there was a loud bang,” recalls Patrizia Perilli. “It was clear there had been a crash. Immediately after that there was a very long and powerful vibration—it seemed like an earthquake.”

A Bologna hairdresser, Donatella Landini, was sitting nearby, marveling at the coastline, when she felt the jolt. “The sensation was like a wave,” she recalls. “Then there was this really loud sound like a ta-ta-ta as the rocks penetrated the ship.” Gianmaria Michelino, a hairdresser from Naples, says, “The tables, plates, and glasses began to fall and people began to run. Many people fell. Women who had been running in high heels fell.”

All around, diners surged toward the restaurant’s main entrance. Aho and Fleser took their daughter and headed for a side exit, where the only crew member they saw, a sequined dancer, was gesticulating madly and shouting in Italian. “Just as we were leaving, the lights went out,” Fleser says, “and people started screaming, really panicking. The lights were out only for a few moments; then the emergency lights came on. We knew the lifeboats were on Deck 4. We didn’t even go back to our room. We just went for the boats.”

“We stayed at our table,” recalls Perilli. “The restaurant emptied and there was a surreal silence in the room. Everyone was gone.”

Somewhere on the ship, an Italian woman named Concetta Robi took out her cell phone and dialed her daughter in the central Italian town of Prato, near Florence. She described scenes of chaos, ceiling panels falling, waiters stumbling, passengers scrambling to put on life jackets. The daughter telephoned the police, the carabinieri.

As passengers tried in vain to understand what was happening, Captain Schettino stood on the bridge, stunned. An officer nearby later told investigators he heard the captain say, “Fuck. I didn’t see it!”

In those first confusing minutes, Schettino spoke several times with engineers belowdecks and sent at least one officer to assess the damage. Moments after the Concordia struck the rock, the chief engineer, Giuseppe Pilon, had hustled toward his control room. An officer emerged from the engine room itself shouting, “There’s water! There’s water!” “I told him to check that all the watertight doors were closed as they should be,” Pilon told prosecutors. “Just as I finished speaking we had a total blackout I opened the door to the engine room and the water had already risen to the main switchboard I informed Captain Schettino of the situation. I told him that the engine room, the main switchboard, and the stern section were flooded. I told him we had lost control of the ship.”

There was a 230-foot-long horizontal gash below the waterline. Seawater was exploding into the engine room and was fast cascading through areas holding all the ship’s engines and generators. The lower decks are divided into giant compartments; if four flood, the ship will sink.

At 9:57, 15 minutes after the ship struck the rock, Schettino phoned Costa Cruises’ operations center. The executive he spoke to, Roberto Ferrarini, later told reporters, “Schettino told me there was one compartment flooded, the compartment with electrical propulsion motors, and with that kind of situation the ship’s buoyancy was not compromised. His voice was quite clear and calm.” Between 10:06 and 10:26, the two men spoke three more times. At one point, Schettino admitted that a second compartment had flooded. That was, to put it mildly, an understatement. In fact, five compartments were flooding; the situation was hopeless. (Later, Schettino would deny that he had attempted to mislead either his superiors or anyone else.)

They were sinking. How much time they had, no one knew. Schettino had few options. The engines were dead. Computer screens had gone black. The ship was drifting and losing speed. Its momentum had carried it north along the island’s coastline, past the harbor, then past a rocky peninsula called Point Gabbianara. By 10 P.M., 20 minutes after striking the rock, the ship was heading away from the island, into open water. If something wasn’t done immediately, it would sink there.

What happened next won’t be fully understood until the *Concordia’*s black-box recorders are analyzed. But from what little Schettino and Costa officials have said, it appears that Schettino realized he had to ground the ship; evacuating a beached ship would be far safer than evacuating at sea. The nearest land, however, was already behind the ship, at Point Gabbianara. Somehow Schettino had to turn the powerless Concordia completely around and ram it into the rocks lining the peninsula. How this happened is not clear. From the ship’s course, some analysts initially speculated that Schettino used an emergency generator to gain control of the ship’s bow thrusters—tiny jets of water used in docking—which allowed him to make the turn. Others maintain that he did nothing, that the turnabout was a moment of incredible luck. They argue that the prevailing wind and current—both pushing the Concordia back toward the island—did most of the work.

“The bow thrusters wouldn’t have been usable, but from what we know, it seems like he could still steer,” says John Konrad, a veteran American captain and nautical analyst. “It looks like he was able to steer into the hairpin turn, and wind and current did the rest.”

However it was done, the Concordia completed a hairpin turn to starboard, turning the ship completely around. At that point, it began drifting straight toward the rocks.

I larione Dell’Anna, the dapper admiral in charge of Coast Guard rescue operations in Livorno, meets me on a freezing evening outside a columned seaside mansion in the coastal city of La Spezia. Inside, waiters in white waistcoats are busy laying out long tables lined with antipasti and flutes of champagne for a naval officers’ reception. Dell’Anna, wearing a blue dress uniform with a star on each lapel, takes a seat on a corner sofa.

“I’ll tell you how it all started: It was a dark and stormy night,” he begins, then smiles. “No, seriously, it was a quiet night. I was in Rome. We got a call from a town outside Florence. The party, a carabinieri officer, had a call from a woman whose mother was on a ship, we don’t know where, who was putting on life jackets. Very unusual, needless to say, for us to get such a call from land. Ordinarily a ship calls us. In this case, we had to find the ship. We were the ones who triggered the entire operation.”

That first call, like hundreds of others in the coming hours, arrived at the Coast Guard’s rescue-coordination center, a cluster of red-brick buildings on the harbor in Livorno, about 90 miles north of Giglio. Three officers were on duty that night inside its small operations room, a 12-by-25-foot white box lined with computer screens. “At 2206, I received the call,” remembers one of the night’s unsung heroes, an energetic 37-year-old petty officer named Alessandro Tosi. The carabinieri “thought it was a ship going from Savona to Barcelona. I called Savona. They said no, no ship had left from there. I asked the carabinieri for more information. They called the passenger’s daughter, and she said it was the Costa Concordia. ”

Six minutes after that first call, at 10:12, Tosi located the Concordia on a radar screen just off Giglio. “So then we called the ship by radio, to ask if there was a problem,” Tosi recalls. An officer on the bridge answered. “He said it was just an electrical blackout,” Tosi continues. “I said, ‘But I’ve heard plates are falling off the dinner tables—why would that be? Why have passengers been ordered to put on life jackets?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s just a blackout.’ He said they would resolve it shortly.”

The Concordia crewman speaking with the Coast Guard was the ship’s navigation officer, a 26-year-old Italian named Simone Canessa. “The Captain ordered … Canessa to say that there was a blackout on board,” third mate Silvia Coronica later told prosecutors. “When asked if we needed assistance, he said, ‘At the moment, no.’ ” The first mate, Ciro Ambrosio, who was also on the bridge, confirmed to investigators that Schettino was fully aware that a blackout was the least of their problems. “The captain ordered us to say that everything was under control and that we were checking the damage, even though he knew that the ship was taking on water.”

Tosi put the radio down, suspicious. This wouldn’t be the first captain who downplayed his plight in hopes of avoiding public humiliation. Tosi telephoned his two superiors, both of whom arrived within a half-hour.

At 10:16, the captain of a Guardia di Finanza cutter—the equivalent of U.S. Customs—radioed Tosi to say he was off Giglio and offered to investigate. Tosi gave the go-ahead. “I got back to the [ Concordia ] and said, ‘Please keep us abreast of what is going on,’ ” says Tosi. “After about 10 minutes, they didn’t update us. Nothing. So we called them again, asking, ‘Can you please update us?’ At that point, they said they had water coming in. We asked what sort of help they needed, and how many people on board had been injured. They said there were no injured. They requested only one tugboat.” Tosi shakes his head. “One tugboat.”

Schettino’s apparent refusal to promptly admit the *Concordia’*s plight—to lie about it, according to the Coast Guard—not only was a violation of Italian maritime law but cost precious time, delaying the arrival of rescue workers by as much as 45 minutes. At 10:28 the Coast Guard center ordered every available ship in the area to head for the island of Giglio.

With the Concordia beginning to list, most of the 3,200 passengers had no clue what to do. A briefing on how to evacuate the ship wasn’t to take place until late the next day. Many, like the Aho family, streamed toward the lifeboats, which lined both sides of Deck 4, and opened lockers carrying orange life jackets. Already, some were panicking. “The life jacket I had, a woman was trying to rip it out of my arms. It actually ripped the thing—you could hear it,” Joan Fleser says. “We stayed right there by one of the lifeboats, No. 19. The whole time we were standing there I only saw one crew member walk by. I asked what was happening. He said he didn’t know. We heard two announcements, both the same, that it was an electrical problem with a generator, technicians were working on it, and everything was under control.”

Internet videos later showed crewmen exhorting passengers to return to their staterooms, which, while jarring in light of subsequent events, made sense at the time: There had been no order to abandon ship. When Addie King, a New Jersey graduate student, emerged from her room wearing a life jacket, a maintenance worker actually told her to put it away. Like most, she ignored the advice and headed to the starboard side of Deck 4, where hundreds of passengers were already lining the rails, waiting and worrying. The Massachusetts newlyweds, Benji Smith and Emily Lau, were among them. “Some people are already crying and screaming,” Smith recalls. “But most people were still pretty well collected. You could see some laughing.”

For the moment, the crowd remained calm.

The island of Giglio, for centuries a haven for vacationing Romans, has a long history of unexpected visitors. Once, they were buccaneers: in the 16th century, the legendary pirate Barbarossa carted off every person on the island to slavery. Today, Giglio’s harbor, ringed by a semicircular stone esplanade lined with cafés and snack shops, is home to a few dozen fishing boats and sailboats. In summer, when the tourists come, the population soars to 15,000. In winter barely 700 remain.

That night, on the far side of the island, a 49-year-old hotel manager, Mario Pellegrini, was pointing a remote control at his television, trying in vain to find something to watch. A handsome man with a mop of curly brown hair and sprays of wrinkles at his eyes, Pellegrini was exhausted. The day before, he and a pal had gone fishing, and when the motor on their boat died, they ended up spending the night at sea. “The sea is not for me,” he sighed to his friend afterward. “You can sell that damn boat.”

The phone rang. It was a policeman at the port. A big ship, he said, was in trouble, just outside the harbor. Pellegrini, the island’s deputy mayor, had no idea how serious the matter was, but the policeman sounded worried. He hopped in his car and began driving across the mountain toward the port, dialing others on Giglio’s island council as he went. He reached a tobacco-shop owner, Giovanni Rossi, who was at his home above the harbor watching his favorite movie, Ben-Hur. “There’s a ship in trouble out there,” Pellegrini told him. “You should get down there.”

“What do you mean, there’s a ship out there?” Rossi said, stepping to his window. Parting the curtains, he gasped. Then he threw on a coat and raced down the hill toward the port. A few moments later, Pellegrini rounded the mountainside. Far below, just a few hundred yards off Point Gabbianara, was the largest ship he had ever seen, every light ablaze, drifting straight toward the rocks alongside the peninsula.

“Oh my God,” Pellegrini breathed.

After completing its desperate hairpin turn away from the open sea, the Concordia struck ground a second time that night between 10:40 and 10:50, running onto the rocky underwater escarpment beside Point Gabbianara, facing the mouth of Giglio’s little harbor, a quarter-mile away. Its landing, such as it was, was fairly smooth; few passengers even remember a jolt. Later, Schettino would claim that this maneuver saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives.

In fact, according to John Konrad’s analysis, it was here that Schettino made the error that actually led to many of the deaths that night. The ship was already listing to starboard, toward the peninsula. In an attempt to prevent it from falling further—it eventually and famously flopped onto its right side—Schettino dropped the ship’s massive anchors. But photos taken later by divers show clearly that they were lying flat, with their flukes pointed upward; they never dug into the seabed, rendering them useless. What happened?

Konrad says it was a jaw-droppingly stupid mistake. “You can see they let out too much chain,” he says. “I don’t know the precise depths, but if it was 90 meters, they let out 120 meters of chain. So the anchors never caught. The ship then went in sideways, almost tripping over itself, which is why it listed. If he had dropped the anchors properly, the ship wouldn’t have listed so badly.”

What could explain so fundamental a blunder? Video of the chaos on the bridge that night later surfaced, and while it sheds little light on Schettino’s technical decisions, it says worlds about his state of mind. “From the video, you can tell he was stunned,” says Konrad. “The captain really froze. It doesn’t seem his brain was processing.”

Schettino did make efforts, however, to ensure that the ship was firmly grounded. As he told prosecutors, he left the bridge and went to Deck 9, near the top of the ship, to survey its position. He worried it was still afloat and thus still sinking; he asked for that tugboat, he said, with the thought it might push the ship onto solid ground. Eventually satisfied it already was, he finally gave the order to abandon ship at 10:58.

Lifeboats lined the railings on both sides of Deck 4. Because the Concordia was listing to starboard, it eventually became all but impossible to lower boats from the port side, the side facing open water; they would just bump against lower decks. As a result, the vast majority of those who evacuated the ship by lifeboat departed from the starboard side. Each boat was designed to hold 150 passengers. By the time Schettino called to abandon ship, roughly 2,000 people had been standing on Deck 4 for an hour or more, waiting. The moment crewmen began opening the lifeboat gates, chaos broke out.

“It was every man, woman, and child for themselves,” says Brian Aho, who crowded onto Lifeboat 19 with his wife, Joan Fleser, and their daughter.

“We had an officer in our lifeboat,” Fleser says. “That was the only thing that kept people from totally rioting. I ended up being first, then Brian and then Alana.”

“There was a man who was trying to elbow Alana out of the way,” Aho recalls, “and she pointed at me, yelling in Italian, ‘Mio papà! Mio papà!’ I saw her feet on the deck above me and I pulled her in by the ankles.”

“The thing I remember most is people’s screams. The cries of the women and children,” recalls Gianmaria Michelino, the hairdresser. “Children who couldn’t find their parents, women who wanted to find their husbands. Children were there on their own.”

Claudio Masia, a 49-year-old Italian, waiting with his wife, their two children, and his elderly parents, lost patience. “I am not ashamed to say that I pushed people and used my fists to secure a place” for his wife and children, he later told an Italian newspaper. Returning for his parents, Masia had to carry his mother, who was in her 80s, into a boat. When he returned for his father, Giovanni, an 85-year-old Sardinian, he had vanished. Masia ran up and down the deck, searching for him, but Giovanni Masia was never seen again.

‘Someone at our muster station called out, ‘Women and children first,’ ” recalls Benji Smith. “That really increased the panic level. The families who were sticking together, they’re being pulled apart. The women don’t want to go without their husbands, the husbands don’t want to lose their wives.”

After being momentarily separated from his wife, Smith pushed his way onto a lifeboat, which dangled about 60 feet above the water. Immediately, however, the crew had problems lowering it. “This is the first part where I thought my life was in danger,” Smith goes on. “The lifeboats have to be pushed out and lowered down. We weren’t being lowered down slowly and evenly from both directions. The stern side would fall suddenly by three feet, then the bow by two feet; port and starboard would tilt sharply to one side or the other. It was very jerky, very scary. The crew members were shouting at each other. They couldn’t figure out what they were doing.” Eventually, to Smith’s dismay, the crewmen simply gave up, cranked the lifeboat back up to the deck, and herded all the passengers back onto the ship.

Others, blocked or delayed in getting into lifeboats, threw themselves into the water and swam toward the rocks at Point Gabbianara, 100 yards way. One of these was a 72-year-old Argentinean judge named María Inés Lona de Avalos. Repeatedly turned away from crowded lifeboats, she sat on the deck amid the chaos. “I could feel the ship creaking, and we were already leaning halfway over,” she later told a Buenos Aires newspaper. A Spaniard beside her yelled, “There’s no other option! Let’s go!” And then he jumped.

A moment later Judge Lona, a fine swimmer in her youth, followed.

“I jumped feetfirst I couldn’t see much. I began swimming, but every 50 feet I would stop and look back. I could hear the ship creaking and was scared that it would fall on top of me if it capsized completely. I swam for a few minutes and reached the island.” She sat on a wet rock and exhaled.

A French couple, Francis and Nicole Servel, jumped as well, after Francis, who was 71, gave Nicole his life jacket because she couldn’t swim. As she struggled toward the rocks, she yelled, “Francis!,” and he replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” Francis Servel was never seen again.

The first lifeboats limped into the harbor a few minutes after 11.

By the time Giglio’s deputy mayor, Mario Pellegrini, reached the harbor, townspeople had begun to collect on its stone esplanade. “We’re all looking at the ship, trying to figure out what happened,” he recalls. “We thought it must be an engine breakdown of some kind. Then we saw the lifeboats dropping down, and the first ones began to arrive in the port.” Local schools and the church were opened, and the first survivors were hustled inside and given blankets. Every free space began to fill.

“I looked at the mayor and said, ‘We’re such a small port—we should open the hotels,’ ” Pellegrini says. “Then I said, ‘Maybe it’s better for me to go on board to see what’s going on.’ I didn’t have a minute to think. I just jumped on a lifeboat, and before I knew it I was out on the water.”

Reaching the ship, Pellegrini grabbed a rope ladder dangling from a lower deck. “As soon as I got on board, I started looking for someone in charge. There were just crew members, standing and talking on Deck 4, with the lifeboats. They had no idea what was going on. I said, ‘I’m looking for the captain, or someone in charge. I’m the deputy mayor! Where’s the captain?’ Everyone goes, ‘I don’t know. There’s no one in charge.’ I was running around like that for 20 minutes. I ran through all the decks. I eventually emerged on top, where the swimming pool is. Finally I found the guy in charge of hospitality. He didn’t have any idea what was going on, either. At that point the ship wasn’t really tilting all that badly. It was easy to load people into the lifeboats. So I went down and started to help out there.”

For the next half-hour or so, lifeboats shuttled people into the harbor. When a few returned to the starboard side, scores of passengers marooned on the port side sprinted through darkened passageways to cross the ship and reach them. Amanda Warrick, an 18-year-old Boston-area student, lost her footing on the slanting, slippery deck and fell down a small stairwell, where she found herself in knee-deep water. “The water was actually rising,” she says. “That was pretty scary.” Somehow, carrying a laptop computer and a bulky camera, she managed to scramble 50 feet across the deck and jump into a waiting boat.

While there was plenty of chaos aboard the Concordia that night, what few have noted is that, despite confused crew members and balky lifeboats, despite hundreds of passengers on the edge of panic, this first stage of the evacuation proceeded in a more-or-less orderly fashion. Between 11, when the first lifeboats dropped to the water, and about 12:15—a window of an hour and 15 minutes—roughly two-thirds of the people on board the ship, somewhere between 2,500 and 3,300 in all, made it to safety. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there.

Rescue at Sea

Ahelicopter arrived from the mainland at 11:45. It carried a doctor, a paramedic, and two rescue swimmers from the Vigili del Fuoco, Italy’s fire-and-rescue service. A van whisked them from Giglio’s airfield to the port, where the swimmers, Stefano Turchi, 49, and 37-year-old Paolo Scipioni, pushed through the crowds, boarded a police launch, and changed into orange wet suits. Before them, the Concordia, now listing at a 45-degree angle, was lit by spotlights from a dozen small boats bobbing at its side. The launch headed for the port bow, where people had been jumping into the water. As it approached, a Filipino crewman on a high deck suddenly leapt from the ship, falling nearly 30 feet into the sea. “Stefano and I swam about 30 meters to rescue him,” Scipioni says. “He was in shock, very tired, and freezing cold. We took him ashore and then went back to the ship.”

It was the first of six trips the two divers would make in the next two hours. On the second trip they pulled in a 60-year-old Frenchwoman floating in her life jacket near the bow. “Are you O.K.?” Turchi asked in French.

“I’m fine,” she said. Then she said, “I’m not fine.”

Next they pulled in a second Frenchwoman in an advanced state of hypothermia. “She was shaking uncontrollably,” Scipioni recalls. “She was conscious, but her face was violet and her hands were violet and her fingers were white. Her circulatory system was shutting down. She kept saying, ‘My husband, Jean-Pierre! My husband!’ We took her ashore and went back.”

On their fourth trip they lifted an unconscious man into the police launch; this was probably the woman’s husband, Jean-Pierre Micheaud, the night’s first confirmed death. He had died of hypothermia.

By 12:15 almost everyone on the *Concordia’*s starboard side had fled the ship. Among the last to go were Captain Schettino and a group of officers. After leaving the bridge, Schettino had gone to his cabin to grab some of his things, before rushing, he said, to help with the lifeboats. Minutes later, the Concordia began to roll slowly to starboard, falling almost onto its side. For a moment there was complete chaos as many of those still on the starboard side, including the second and third mates, were forced to dive into the water and swim for the rocks. It was at that point, Schettino famously claimed, that he lost his footing and fell onto the roof of a lifeboat. The captain later said his lifeboat plucked three or four people from the water.

Moments before the ship rolled, Giglio’s deputy mayor, Mario Pellegrini, scurried through a passageway, crossing the ship in an effort to help those still on the port side. “When we finished putting them on the boats, there was hardly anyone left on the right side of the boat,” Pellegrini recalls. “That’s when the ship started to tilt more. So I ran through a corridor, to the other side of the ship, and over there there were lots of people, hundreds, more than 500 probably.”

When the ship began to roll, “I couldn’t understand what was going on, the movement was so violent,” says Pellegrini. “Suddenly it was difficult to stand. It was very disorienting. If you took a step forward, you fell. You couldn’t tell which way was up or down. You couldn’t walk. All the people were forced against the walls. That’s when the panic hit, and the electricity went out as well. Lights winking out all over. And when the ship stopped moving, we were in the dark, just the moon, the light of the full moon. And everyone was screaming.” The ship’s chief doctor, a rotund Roman named Sandro Cinquini, was already on the port side. “The ship actually fell gently,” Cinquini recalls. “That was the worst time. People were trapped in the middle [of the ship] as it turned and the water began to rise.”

When the Concordia came to rest once more, its landscape was hopelessly skewed. With the ship lying almost on its right side, walls now became floors; hallways became vertical shafts. Pellegrini was on Deck 4, in a covered corridor with about 150 passengers; beyond was an open deck, where another 500 or so were struggling to regain their footing. When he was able to stand, Pellegrini glanced into the corridor behind—now below—him, and to his horror, he could see seawater surging toward him, as it was all across the starboard side of the ship, inundating the lowest decks and gushing into the restaurants on Deck 4. This was almost certainly the single deadliest moment of the night, when at least 15 people probably drowned. “That’s when I started getting afraid, for myself,” Pellegrini says. “And there were people still down there. You could hear them screaming.”

The screams seemed to be emanating from behind a single hatchway. Pellegrini, working with Dr. Cinquini and another crewman, threw his weight into lifting this door, which was now on the floor. When it came free, he looked down a near-vertical hallway 30 feet long. “There were people down there—it was like they were in a well filling up with water,” Pellegrini says. A crewman grabbed a rope and, swiftly making knots in it, dropped it down to those trapped below. “Four or five of us all began pulling people up from below. They came up one at a time. The first one who came out, a woman, she was so surprised, she came up feetfirst. I had to reach down and pull her out. We took out nine people in all. The first one had been in water up to her waist, the last one was in to his neck. The worst was an American guy, really fat, like 250 pounds, tall and obese; he was hard to get out. The last one was a waiter—his eyes were terrified. The water was freezing. The water was so cold, he couldn’t have survived much longer.”

“He told us there were others behind him,” says Dr. Cinquini, “but he could no longer see them.”

The ship’s roll trapped scores of passengers. Earlier, a Southern California family, Dean Ananias, his wife, Georgia, and their two daughters, aged 31 and 23, had boarded a lifeboat on the port side but were forced to return on board when the *Concordia’*s list rendered the port-side boats useless. Crossing to starboard, they were standing in a darkened hallway, inching forward near the end of a long line of people, when Dean heard the crash of plates and glasses and the ship started to roll.

People began to scream. The family fell to the floor. Dean felt sure the ship was turning completely over, as seen in The Poseidon Adventure. To his amazement, it didn’t. Once the ship settled, the Ananiases found themselves stomach-down on a steep incline; Dean realized they had to crawl upward, back to the port side, which was now above their heads. They grabbed a railing and managed to pull themselves almost all the way to the open deck at the top. But five feet short of the opening, the railing suddenly stopped.

“We started trying to pull ourselves up,” recalls Dean, a retired teacher. “We got up against the wall, and that’s when my daughter Cindy said, ‘I’m gonna launch myself up, push me up and I’ll grab a railing.’ She did it. So did the others. I knew they couldn’t pull me up because I’m larger, so I pulled myself into a frog position and jumped as high as I could.” He made it. But even then, with dozens of people slipping and sliding all around them and no officers in sight, Dean couldn’t see a way off the ship. “I knew we were going to die,” he recalls. “We all just started praying.”

Someone called from below. Turning, they saw a young Argentinean couple, clearly exhausted, holding a toddler. They hadn’t the energy to jump upward. The woman beseeched Georgia to take the child. “Here,” she pleaded, raising the three-year-old, “take my daughter.” Georgia did, then thought better of it. She handed the infant back, saying, “Here, take the child. She should be with you. If the end is going to happen, she should be with her parents.” (They evidently survived.)

While Dean Ananias pondered his next move, Benji Smith and his wife had already crossed to the port side amidships. A crewman urged them to go back. “No, that side is sinking!” Smith barked. “We can’t go there!”

After a few minutes, Smith was startled to see his in-laws approach; on a crewman’s order, they had returned to their rooms and, unable to understand the English-language announcements, had remained inside so long they missed the lifeboats. At that point, Smith recalls, “we were listing so severely the walls were slowly turning into floors, and we realized that if we don’t make a decisive move quickly, if we want to jump, we won’t be able to.” Boats were bobbing far below; at this point, anyone who leapt from a port railing would simply land further down the hull. Somehow, Smith saw, they had to get closer to the boats. The only obvious way down was along the outer hull, now tilted at a steep angle. It was like a giant slippery slide, but one Smith could see was far too dangerous to use.

Then he saw the rope. Hurriedly Smith tied a series of knots into it, then tied one end to the outer railing. He explained to his frightened relatives that their only option was to rappel down the hull. “We hugged each other and said our good-byes, and I told everyone, ‘I love you,’ ” Smith says. “We really felt, all of us, that dying was in the cards.”

Smith was among the first over the side. With the ship listing to starboard, the angle wasn’t that steep; in two bounds he made it to Deck 3 below. His family followed. Looking up, Smith saw worried faces staring down at them.

“The language barriers made it difficult to talk, but using our hands and waving, we got a bunch of people down to the third deck,” Smith says. “Then I re-tied the rope to the railing on Deck 3, thinking we could climb down this rope and position ourselves to jump in the water, or the boats. So we started climbing down the rope, all six of us. And then, up above us, a steady stream of people began to follow.”

Soon, Smith estimates, there were 40 people hanging on to his rope at the ship’s midsection, among them the Ananias family. What they should do next, no one had a clue.

A Huge Black Buffalo

The Coast Guard helicopter base responsible for operations in the Tyrrhenian Sea is a cluster of office buildings and hangars in the town of Sarzana, 130 miles northwest of Giglio. Its commander, a ruggedly handsome 49-year-old named Pietro Mele, had been asleep when the first call came in from the operations center. Not until a second call, at 10:35, just minutes before the Concordia ran aground, was he told that the ship in trouble carried 4,000 people. “Holy shit,” Mele said to himself. The largest rescue his unit had ever attempted was a dozen people plucked from a sinking freighter off the city of La Spezia in 2005.

Mele called in every available pilot. By the time he reached the base, at 11:20, the first helicopter, a slow-moving Agusta Bell 412 code-named “Koala 9,” was already rising from the tarmac for the hour-long flight south. A half-hour later a second helicopter, a faster model code-named “Nemo 1,” followed suit. “We expected to find something there all lit up, a floating Christmas tree, but instead what we found was this huge black buffalo lying on its side in the water,” Mele recalls.

Both helicopters were, figuratively and literally, operating in the dark. There was no chance of communication with anyone on board; the only way to assess the situation, in fact, was to lower a man onto the Concordia. The pilot of Nemo 1, Salvatore Cilona, slowly circled the ship, searching for a safe spot to try it. For several minutes he studied the midsection but determined that the helicopter’s downdraft, combined with the precarious angle of the ship, made this too dangerous.

“The ship was listing at 80 degrees, so there was incredible risk of slipping off,” recalls Nemo 1’s rescue diver, Marco Savastano.

Moving toward the bow, they saw clusters of people waving for help. Savastano, a slender Coast Guard veteran with a receding hairline, thought he could alight safely on a slanting passageway beside the bridge. At about 12:45, Savastano climbed into a “horse collar” harness and allowed himself to be winched down to the ship. Extricating himself, he dropped through an open door into the total blackness inside the bridge. To his surprise, he found 56 people clustered inside, most pressed against the far wall.

“What really struck me was the total silence of these 56 people,” he remembers, shaking his head. “The look on their faces was totally fixed, just an empty look. They were in a state of unreality. It was very dark. I asked if anyone was injured. No one was hurt seriously. I tried my best to calm them down.”

After Savastano radioed in the situation, a second diver, Marco Restivo, joined him on the bridge. It was clear the older passengers were in no shape to walk far. Savastano and Restivo decided to begin winching people up to the helicopters. Savastano chose an especially shaken Spanish woman, about 60, to go first. “She didn’t want to leave her husband,” he recalls. “I told her, ‘Don’t worry about it. As soon as I get you on board, I will come back for your husband.’ ”

By the time Savastano was ready to return to the Concordia, the pilot had spotted two passengers in a precarious position, sitting on an open door about 25 feet below the bridge. “We just saw flashing lights, so we followed the lights down,” Savastano recalls. Reaching the open door, he found two Asian crew members, begging for rescue. “Their faces, they were just so terrified,” he recalls. “They were in such a dangerous position, I had to give them priority. It was very tricky because the space was so tight. Every movement of the helo put us at risk. If it moved just a little, the passengers would strike the side of the ship and be crushed. Me too. I went down and began to try to rescue them, but I kept slipping. The floor was very slippery, and the ship was so tilted. The first guy, I got him into the strap, but he wouldn’t stay still. I had to keep pushing his arms down, so he wouldn’t fall out [of the horse collar]. When I finally got him up [to the helicopter], he just fainted.”

Savastano returned to the ship, and had just begun winching the second crew member aloft when, to his surprise, a porthole suddenly opened and a ghostly face appeared. “Fuck!” he shouted.

Savastano raised a clenched fist, signaling the winch operator to stop lifting him. The face belonged to one of five passengers who were stuck on a lower deck with no way out. “Then the pilot told me we only had two minutes left—we were running out of fuel—so I said to these people, ‘Don’t move! We will be right back!’ ” With three passengers now aboard, Nemo 1 wheeled into the night sky and headed to the town of Grosseto to refuel.

Before his lifeboat had reached the rocks, Captain Schettino’s cell phone rang once more. This time it was one of the Coast Guard supervisors at Livorno, Gregorio De Falco. It was 12:42.

“We’ve abandoned ship,” Schettino told him.

De Falco was startled. “You’ve abandoned ship?” he asked.

Schettino, no doubt sensing De Falco’s dismay, said, “I did not abandon the ship … we were thrown into the water.”

When De Falco put down the phone, he stared at the officers beside him in amazement. This violated every tenet of maritime tradition, not to mention Italian law. “The captain had abandoned ship with hundreds of people on board, people who trusted him,” says De Falco’s boss, Cosma Scaramella. “This is an extremely serious thing, not just because it’s a crime.” For a moment he struggles to find a word. “This,” he goes on, “is an infamy. To abandon women and children, it’s like a doctor who abandons his patients.”

The lifeboat carrying Schettino and his officers did not head into the harbor. Instead, it disgorged its passengers at the nearest land, along the rocks at Point Gabbianara. A few dozen people were already there, most of them having swum. “I noticed the captain did not help, in any way,” a crewman told investigators, “neither in the recovery of people in the water, nor in coordinating rescue operations. He remained on the rocks watching the ship sink.”

Giglio’s rock-jawed police chief, Roberto Galli, had been among the first islanders to pull alongside the Concordia, in a police launch, just after it ran aground. At 12:15, having returned to the docks to coordinate rescue efforts, Galli glanced into the distance and noticed something strange: a set of twinkling lights—“like Christmas lights,” he recalls—on the rocks at Point Gabbianara. With a start, Galli realized the lights must be from life preservers, meaning there were survivors, probably cold and wet, out on the boulders at the water’s edge. He grabbed two of his men and drove two miles from the port to a roadside high above the Concordia. From there, navigating by the light of his cell phone, Galli and his officers stumbled down the barren slope. He fell twice. It took 20 minutes.

When he reached the rocks below, Galli was stunned to find 110 shivering survivors. There were women, children, and elderly, and few spoke any Italian. Galli and his men called for a bus and began herding them all up the rocky slope toward the road above. Returning to the water’s edge, he was surprised to find a group of four or five people who had remained behind. He glanced at the *Concordia’*s giant gold smokestack, which was looming toward them; he was worried it might explode.

“Come, come!” Galli announced. “It’s too dangerous to stay here.”

“We’re officers from the ship,” a voice replied.

Galli was startled to find himself talking to Captain Schettino and another officer, Dimitrios Christidis. As several people observed, the captain was not wet.

“I was shocked,” Galli recalls. “I could see on the ship there were major operations going on. I could see helicopters lifting passengers off the ship. I said, ‘Come with me. I’ll take you to the port, and then you can get back to the ship,’ because I thought that was their job. Schettino said, ‘No, I want to stay here, to verify conditions on the ship.’ For about 30 minutes, I stayed with them, watching. At one point, Schettino asked to use my telephone, because his was running out of juice. I wasn’t giving this guy my phone. Because, unlike him, I was trying to save people. Finally, when I was about to leave, they asked for a blanket and tea. I said, ‘If you come back with me, I’ll give you whatever you want.’ But he didn’t move. So I left.”

Not long after, at 1:46, the angry Coast Guard officer, De Falco, telephoned Schettino once more. The captain was still sitting on his rock, staring glumly at the Concordia. De Falco had heard there was a rope ladder hanging from the bow of the ship. “Schettino? Listen, Schettino,” he began. “There are people trapped on board. Now you go with your boat under the prow on the starboard side. There’s a rope ladder. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I’m recording this conversation, Captain Schettino.”

Schettino tried to object, but De Falco wasn’t having it. “You go up that rope ladder, get on that ship, and tell me how many people are still on board, and what they need. Is that clear? … I’m going to make sure you get in trouble. I’m going to make you pay for this. Get the fuck on board!”

“Captain, please,” Schettino begged.

“No ‘please.’ You get moving and go on board now … ”

“I am here with the rescue boats. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“What are you doing, Captain?”

“I am here to coordinate the rescue … ”

“What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Are you refusing?”

They bickered another minute. “But you realize it’s dark and we can’t see anything,” Schettino pleaded.

“And so what?” De Falco demanded. “You want to go home, Schettino? It’s dark and you want to go home?”

Schettino offered more excuses. De Falco cut him off one last time.

“Go! Immediately!”

Later, I asked De Falco’s boss, Cosma Scaramella, whether he thought the captain was in shock. “I don’t know,” Scaramella told me. “He didn’t seem very lucid.”

A half-hour or so after his last call from the Coast Guard, a rescue boat plucked Schettino from his rock and ferried him to the harbor. He talked to the police for a bit, then found a priest, who later said the captain, in a daze, cried for a very long time.

By one A.M., with the Concordia now lying almost flat on its side, between 700 and 1,000 people remained on board. Clumps of people were scattered throughout the ship, many clinging to railings. About 40 were hanging on Benji Smith’s rope amidships. Almost everyone else had congregated in a panicky crowd of 500 or more toward the stern, on the port side of Deck 4, facing the sea. Many of these had taken refuge in a cramped passageway; others remained on the deck outside. Dozens of boats had gathered, about 60 feet below—the Coast Guard later counted 44 different craft in use by dawn—but there was no easy route to them.

To date, no one has identified exactly who found the long rope ladder and tossed it down to the water. One of the boatmen below, the tobacco-shop owner Giovanni Rossi, recalls a Filipino crewman who scaled up and down it several times, trying to coordinate a rescue. According to Mario Pellegrini, who was mired in the chaos above, two crewmen worked with him to supervise the aborning escape attempt: the doctor, Sandro Cinquini, and especially young Simone Canessa, the same officer who earlier in the evening told the Coast Guard the ship had suffered only a blackout. Canessa’s role in the evacuation has not been mentioned publicly; yet according to Pellegrini, he was the single most effective crewman still working to evacuate the ship during the long night’s most harrowing hours.

“When I got up there and saw Simone, he was the boss, he was the only one up there really helping,” says Pellegrini. “When he realized I was there to help, he saw we could work together. He was fantastic. Simone, I think, created this whole escape route. He was at the top. I did my best to help him.”

“I am not a hero: I did my job,” Canessa told VANITY FAIR in a brief telephone interview. “I did everything I could to save everyone I could.”

It was Canessa, Pellegrini believes, who found an aluminum ladder and leaned it skyward, onto the outer railing of Deck 4, which was now above their heads. A passenger could climb this ladder to the railing above, then, grabbing the rope ladder, scoot on his rear down the hull to the boats. It was risky, but doable. The problem was establishing an orderly procedure. “The only way out, for everyone, was this small aluminum ladder,” Pellegrini says. “When the ship fell and panic first hit, everyone threw themselves at this ladder. They had no regard for anyone else. It was horrible. I just remember all the children crying.”

“A crowd is an ugly monster if there is panic,” says Dr. Cinquini, who tried in vain to calm people. “No one was listening to me. They were running up and down, slipping, ready to throw themselves in There were a lot of children. You couldn’t convince them [to calm down]. People were out of their minds. The fathers, who are often more fragile than the mothers, were losing it, while the mothers were trying to maintain a certain level of calm.”

“There was a couple with a small child, a three-year-old in a life jacket,” Pellegrini recalls. “When the mother went on the ladder, the father tried to lift the child up. As he’s doing that, someone else shoves in front. The mother is pulling the life jacket; the father holds on; the kid is almost choking. It was horrible. I started yelling at people, ‘Don’t be animals! Stop being animals!’ I shouted this many times, to allow the children in. It had no effect.”

“People were shouting, crying; people were falling over; there was total panic,” recalls a 31-year-old advertising salesman named Gianluca Gabrielli, who managed to climb the ladder with his wife and their two small children. Outside, on the hull, “I felt alive,” Gabrielli says. “I had gotten out. I saw the patrol boats, the helicopters. People were somehow calmer up here. I felt better. I took one child, my eldest, Giorgia. My wife took the other. We started going down the rope ladder clutching each child in front of us as we went down on our bottoms. We were afraid the wood in between the rope ladder would break. I told the kids to think it was just like going down the ladder of their bunk beds, to think of it like an adventure. Me? I felt like Rambo on the Titanic. ”

The crowd began to calm only when Pellegrini and Cinquini managed to herd many of them out of the packed passageway onto the open deck alongside. “From there we could see the stars,” recalls Cinquini. “It was a beautiful night, calm and indifferent to the chaos. Once out in the open the people saw the land was close by and that calmed them.”

Slowly, order returned. Pellegrini took control of the line to the aluminum ladder, holding children while parents climbed, then handing them up. Somewhere fuel had spilled, however, and footing on the inclined deck had become treacherous. The hardest part came when passengers reached the top of the ladder and confronted the long, thin rope ladder descending to the sea. “It was incredibly difficult,” says Pellegrini. “The parents didn’t want to let go of the children. The kids didn’t want to let go of the parents. The most difficult were the elderly. They didn’t want to let go [of the railing] and descend. There was this one woman, it took 15 minutes to move her. She was so frightened, I had to physically pry her fingers free.”

One by one, people inched down the rope ladder, most scooting on their rear ends. Dozens of people were on the ladder at once. Infra-red footage from the helicopters shows the incredible scene, a long spray of tiny darkened figures on the outer hull, clinging to the rope ladder, looking for all the world like a line of desperate ants. “No one fell—not one,” Pellegrini says with a smile. “We didn’t lose a single person.”

At the bottom of the rope ladder, boats took turns picking up the exhausted passengers, helping them jump down the last five or six feet to safety. Giovanni Rossi and his crew alone managed to ferry at least 160 of them safely into the harbor.

Abandoning Ship

Not everyone made it to safety, however. Among those lending help on Deck 4 was the kindly 56-year-old hotel director, Manrico Giampedroni. As people shimmied down the hull, Giampedroni spied a group at the far end of the ship. “I wanted to go and rescue these people,” he told the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, “because at times a word of comfort, the sight of a uniform, or a friendly person is enough to inspire courage. Staying in a group is one thing; alone is much more difficult. I headed to the bow, walking on the walls; the ship was so tilted you had to stay on the walls.”

As he walked, Giampedroni tapped on the doors now at his feet, listening for responses that never came. He didn’t bother trying any of them; they all opened from the inside. Or so he thought. He had just stepped on a door outside the Milano Restaurant when, to his dismay, it gave way. Suddenly he was falling into darkness. He slammed into a wall about 15 feet down, then tumbled down what felt like half the ship, finally landing, ominously, in seawater up to his neck. He felt a stabbing pain in his left leg; it was broken in two places. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized he was inside the restaurant, now a vast, freezing swimming pool jammed with floating tables and chairs. He realized the water was slowly rising.

Giampedroni managed to crawl atop the metal base of a table, balancing himself on one leg, as he shouted and shouted and shouted for help.

No one came.

The line of people on Benji Smith’s rope remained there for two solid hours, bathed in spotlights from the boats below. It was cold; their arms ached. When the helicopters hovered overhead, everyone shouted and waved their arms.

“The boats didn’t know what to do, how to get close,” Smith says. “Finally one of the lifeboats came back. The crew had to stabilize it, but with all the waves from the other boats, it kept crashing into the ship. Crash crash crash crash. It had this little gate, like three feet wide. We needed to jump down three or four feet into the gate, but the boat is moving back and forth, crashing into the hull. Someone could easily lose their legs if they don’t jump just right.” The crewmen below tried holding on to the end of Smith’s rope, but when the boat lurched, so did the rope, triggering panicked shouts up and down its length. Finally, Smith and his wife, along with several others, decided to leap onto the lifeboat’s roof. “We heard this crunching noise when we landed,” he says. “But we made it.”

When the lifeboat was finally stabilized, the crewmen slowly helped the others off the rope. In this way about 120 more people escaped unharmed.

By five o’clock almost all of the 4,200 passengers and crew had made it off the ship, by lifeboat, jumping into the water, or scuttling down ropes and ladders on the port side. Rescue divers had returned and winched 15 more into helicopters; the last passengers on the bridge were slowly led down to the rope ladder. Fire-rescue teams had begun climbing onto the ship, looking for stragglers. As they searched, the only people they found were Mario Pellegrini; Simone Canessa; the doctor, Sandro Cinquini; and a Korean hostess who had slipped and broken her ankle. “I put it in plaster,” says Cinquini. “I hugged her the whole time because she was shaking. Then a short time later everything was done. The four of us could go down. But the deputy mayor stayed.”

“Once everything was done, there was a bit of calm,” says Pellegrini. “[Canessa and I] took a megaphone and [started] calling to see if anyone was still on board. Up and down Deck 4, we did this twice. We opened all the doors, shouting, ‘Is anyone there?’ We didn’t hear any response.”

They were among the last to leave the Concordia. Pellegrini climbed down the rope ladder and a few minutes later found himself standing safely on the harbor’s stone esplanade. As the sun began to rise, he turned to Cinquini. “Come on, Doctor, I’ll buy you a beer,” he said, and that is what he did.

All that night and into the dawn, hundreds of exhausted passengers stood along the harbor or huddled inside Giglio’s church and the adjacent Hotel Bahamas, where the owner, Paolo Fanciulli, emptied every bottle in his bar—for free—and fielded calls from reporters all over the world.

By midmorning passengers began boarding ferries for the long road home. It was then, around 11:30, that Captain Schettino materialized at the hotel, alone, asking for a pair of dry socks. A TV crew spotted him and had just stuck a microphone in his face when a woman, apparently a cruise-line official, appeared and herded him away.

All day Saturday, rescue workers fanned out across the ship, looking for survivors. Sunday morning they found a pair of South Korean newlyweds still in their stateroom; safe but shivering, they had slept through the impact, waking to find the hallway so steeply inclined that they couldn’t safely navigate it. Somehow, though, no one found poor Manrico Giampedroni, the hotel director, who remained perched on a table above the water in the Milano Restaurant. He could hear the emergency crews and banged a saucepan to get their attention, but it was no use. When the water rose, he managed to crawl to a dry wall. He stayed there all day Saturday, his broken leg throbbing, sipping from cans of Coke and a bottle of Cognac he found floating by. Finally, around four A.M. Sunday, a fireman heard his shouts. It took three hours to lift him from his watery perch. He hugged the fireman for all he was worth. Airlifted to a mainland hospital, Giampedroni was the last person taken off the ship alive.

The toll of the dead and missing climbed to 32. By mid-March, all but two of their bodies had been found. A few, it appears, perhaps seven or eight, died after jumping into the water, either from drowning or hypothermia. Most, however, were found inside the ship, suggesting they had drowned when the Concordia rolled a little after midnight.

A Hungarian violinist, Sandor Feher, helped several children put on life jackets before heading back to his cabin to pack his instrument; he drowned. One of the most heartbreaking stories involved the only child to die, a five-year-old Italian girl named Dayana Arlotti, who drowned with her father, William. He had severe diabetes, and the two may have gone back to their cabin to retrieve medicine. Mario Pellegrini thought they might be the panicked father and daughter he saw late that night, running back and forth on Deck 4, asking for help.

Three months after the disaster, investigations into the wreck of the Concordia plod onward. Captain Schettino, who remains under house arrest at his home near Naples, could face multiple charges of manslaughter and illegally abandoning his ship once formally indicted. Persistent leaks suggest that another half-dozen officers, as well as officials at Costa Cruises, could eventually face charges. In March, a dozen survivors and their families filed into a theater in the coastal city of Grosseto to give testimony. Outside, the streets were jammed with reporters. Few believed they would see justice for those who died aboard the Concordia, at least not anytime soon. “At the end of all this,” one man predicted, “it will all be for nothing. You wait and see.”

The Concordia itself remains where it fell that night, on the rocks at Point Gabbianara. Salvage workers finally managed to drain its fuel tanks in March, lessening the possibility of environmental damage. But the ship will take an estimated 10 to 12 months to remove. If you study it today from the harbor at Giglio, there is something unearthly about the ship, a sense, however slight, that it has suddenly appeared from a bygone era, when ships still sank and people died. This was something that several survivors remarked on afterward, that amazingly, in a world of satellites and laser-guided weapons and instant communication almost anywhere on earth, ships could still sink. As the Italian survivor Gianluca Gabrielli said, “I never believed this could still happen in 2012.”

Bryan Burrough

Special correspondent, cocktail hour.

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Italy marks 10 years since deadly Costa Concordia shipwreck

Italy is marking the 10th anniversary of the costa concordia cruise ship disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil marking the moment the ship slammed into a reef and then capsized off tuscany, article bookmarked.

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Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil marking the moment the ship slammed into a reef and then capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

A noon Mass in Giglio’s church is honoring the 32 people who died in the Jan. 13, 2012, shipwreck, while survivors and relatives of the dead will place a wreath in the water where the hulking liner finally came to rest on its side off Giglio’s coast.

The anniversary is also recalling how the residents of Giglio gave shelter that night to the 4,200 passengers and crew, and then lived with the Concordia's wrecked carcass for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

Those residents gave a warm welcome on Wednesday to Kevin Rebello, whose brother Russel Rebello, a Concordia waiter, remained unaccounted for until crews discovered his remains while dismantling the ship in 2014 in a Genoa shipyard.

Kevin Rebello had become close to many Giglio residents during the months that divers searched for his brother, and his return to the island on the last ferry of the day on the eve of the anniversary turned into an emotional reunion.

“My brother did his duty. He lost his life protecting other people,” Kevin Rebello said as he arrived on Giglio. “I am proud of this. And I think he would be proud of what he did, helping so many people.”

The anniversary comes as the cruise ship industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

For Concordia survivors, the COVID-19 infections on cruise ships are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship too close to shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower to the water because the ship was listing too heavily.

Passenger Ester Percossi recalled being thrown to the ground in the dining room by the initial impact of the reef gashing into the hull, which she said felt “like an earthquake." The lights went out, and bottles, glasses and plates flew off the tables and onto the floor.

“We got up and with great effort went out on the deck and there we got the life vests, those that we could find, because everyone was grabbing them from each other, to save themselves," she recalled. “There was no law. Just survival and that is it."

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the listing ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

Winfield reported from Rome.

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The Wreck of the Costa Concordia

• Alan Taylor
• January 16, 2012

On the night of Friday, January 13, the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, with more than 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew members on board, struck a reef, keeled over, and partially sank off Isola del Giglio, Italy. Six people are now confirmed dead, including two French passengers and one Peruvian crew member, apparently after jumping into the chilly Mediterranean waters after the wreck. Fourteen more people still remain missing, as search and rescue teams continue their efforts to find survivors. The incident occurred only hours into the cruise, and passengers had not yet undergone any lifeboat drills -- that plus the severe list of the ship made evacuation chaotic and frightening. Captain Francesco Schettino has been arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. Gathered here are images of the Costa Concordia, as efforts are still underway to find the fourteen passengers that remain missing.

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View of the Costa Concordia taken on January 14, 2012, after the cruise ship ran aground and keeled over off the Isola del Giglio. Five passengers drowned and about 15 still remain missing after the Italian ship with some 4,200 people on board ran aground. The Costa Concordia was on a trip around the Mediterranean when it apparently hit a reef near the island of Giglio on Friday, only a few hours into its voyage, as passengers were sitting down for dinner. #

This photo acquired by the Associated Press from a passenger of the luxury ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany shows fellow passengers wearing life-vests on board the Costa Concordia as they wait to be evacuated, on Saturday, January 14, 2012. #

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans after it ran aground off the coast of the Isola del Giglio island, Italy, early Saturday, January 14, 2012. #

Passengers of the Costa Concordia arrive at Porto Santo Stefano on January 14, 2012, after the cruise ship ran aground and keeled over the night before. Some of the passengers jumped into the icy waters. The ship was on a cruise in the Mediterranean, leaving from Savona with planned stops in Civitavecchia, Palermo, Cagliari, Palma, Barcelona and Marseille," the company said. #

A survivor of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, arrives at the harbor, in Marseille, southern France, on January 14, 2012. #

The Costa Concordia, off the west coast of Italy at Giglio island, on January 14, 2012. #

The Costa Concordia leans on its side after running aground, on January 14, 2012. #

Gashes in the hull of the Costa Concordia, off the west coast of Italy, on January 14, 2012. #

Firefighters on a dinghy examine a large rock emerging from the side of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, the day after it ran aground on Sunday, January 15, 2012. #

The Costa Concordia, surrounded by smaller boats, on Saturday, January 14, 2012, after running aground. #

An evening view of the Costa Concordia, on January 15, 2012 in the harbor of the Tuscan island of Giglio. #

A rescue boat points a light at the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leaning on its side on January 14, 2012. #

Italian firefighters climb on the Costa Concordia on January 14, 2012. #

Firemen inspect the Costa Concordia on January 15, 2012. #

Rescuers check the sea near the Costa Concordia on January 15, 2012, after the cruise ship ran aground the night before. #

People look at the deck chairs piled on the deck of the leaning Costa Concordia, on January 15, 2012, after the cruise ship ran aground on January 13. #

Partially submerged cabins of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, photographed on January 14, 2012. #

An Italian firefighter helicopter lifts a passenger from the cruise ship Costa Concordia on January 15, 2012. Firefighters worked Sunday to rescue the crew member with a suspected broken leg from the overturned hulk of the luxury cruise liner, 36 hours after it ran aground. #

Divers inspect the Costa Concordia on January 15, 2012. #

Italian Coast guard personnel pass on the black box of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia, on January 14, 2012. #

Costa Concordia cruise liner captain Francesco Schettino (right) is escorted by a Carabinieri in Grosseto, Italy, on January 14, 2012. Schettino, the captain of the Italian cruise liner that ran aground off Italy's west coast, was arrested on the charges of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, police said. #

In this underwater photo taken on January 13 and released by the Italian Coast Guard on January 16, 2012, a view of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, after it ran aground near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy. #

A breach is seen on the body of the cruise ship Costa Concordia in this underwater photo released by the Italian Coast Guard on January 16, 2012. #

An Italian Coast guard diver inspects the wreckage of the Costa Concordia on January 16, 2012. Over-reliance on electronic navigation systems and a failure of judgement by the captain are seen as possible reasons for one of the worst cruise liner disasters of all time, maritime specialists say. #

An Italian Coast guard diver inspects inside the Costa Concordia cruise ship on January 16, 2012. #

An Italian Coast guard diver swims through debris inside the partially-submerged Costa Concordia, on January 16, 2012. Rescuers resumed a search of the hulk of a giant cruise liner off the west coast of Italy on Monday after bad weather forced them to halt operations, but hopes were fading of finding more survivors. #

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Cruise ship runs aground off Italy, 3 dead

January 14, 2012 / 8:16 PM EST / CBS/AP

Last Updated 8:07 p.m. ET

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy — Divers searched the submerged part of a luxury cruise liner that went aground off Italy's coast in case any of about 40 people unaccounted for might be trapped inside, a coast guard official said Saturday.

Three bodies were recovered from the sea after the luxury cruise Costa Concordia ran aground and tipped over off the tiny island of Giglio near the coast of Tuscany late Friday. Rescuers searching the wrecked ship for the missing found two survivors late Saturday in a cabin on the ship. They were in good condition, rescuers told the ANSA Italian news agency.

On Saturday the ship was lying virtually flat off Giglio's coast, its starboard side submerged in the water and a 160-foot gash showing clearly on its upturned hull.

A coast guard official said those unaccounted for might be "in the belly of the ship."

Capt. Cosimo Nicastro of the Coast Guard said Saturday divers are helping carry out a risky operation to inspect the submerged half of the Costa Concordia in case anyone remained trapped inside.

Italian media is reporting that the captain of the ship has been detained by police and is being held in a "stato di fermo" - detained for questioning - with prosecutors having 48 hours to arrest him or let him go. Corriere della Sera is reporting that the first officer has been detained as well.

Passengers described a scene reminiscent of "Titanic," saying they escaped the ship by crawling along upended hallways, desperately trying to reach safety as the lights went out and plates and glasses crashed. Helicopters whisked some survivors to safety, others were rescued by private boats in the area, and witnesses said some people jumped from the ship into the dark, cold sea.

Fact sheet: The Costa Concordia cruise liner

Nicastro told Sky TG24 TV there are no firm indications that anyone was trapped. But he notes rescuers carried out an extensive search of the waters near the ship for hours and "we would have seen bodies."

ANSA quoted the prefect's office in the province of Grosseto as saying that authorities have accounted for 4,165 of the 4,234 people who had boarded the liner.

One of the victims was a Peruvian crew member, a diplomat from the South American country said, adding that a Peruvian woman was also missing. The ANSA new agency identified the other two fatalities as French passengers, but didn't cite a source.

At least one of the dead is believed to have succumbed to a heart attack when he panicked and jumped into icy waters, reports CBS News correspondent Alan Pizzey.

Pizzey reports that some passengers were complaining that, as they came off the ship, no one was actually counting them. With more than 3,000 passengers and more than 1,000 crew members, there are a lot of people to account for among those rescued by lifeboats, ships and helicopters.

Passengers complained the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many of them to be released.

Carnival Corp., which owns the cruise line that the ship belongs to, didn't address the allegations in a statement it issued.

"Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the grounding of the Costa Concordia and especially the loved ones of those who lost their lives. They will remain in our thoughts and prayers in the wake of this tragic event."

Authorities have been checking names against the passenger list, but have had a hard time accounting for everyone. They still hadn't counted all the survivors by the time they reached the mainland 12 hours later.

An evacuation drill was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, even though some passengers had already been on board for several days.

"It was so unorganized, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5 p.m.," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. "We had joked 'What if something had happened today?'"

"Have you seen 'Titanic'? That's exactly what it was," said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean. They all bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along nearly vertical hallways and stairwells, trying to reach rescue boats.

"We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing," her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61, said. "We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls."

She choked up as she recounted the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship lurched to the side and the family found themselves standing on a wall. "He said 'take my baby,"' Mrs. Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand as she teared up. "I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn't want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn't hold her.

"I thought that was the end and I thought they should be with their baby," she said.

"I wonder where they are," daughter Valerie whispered.

The family said they were some of the last off the ship, forced to shimmy along a rope down the exposed side of the ship to a waiting rescue vessel below.

Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbor of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio. She was wearing elegant dinner clothes — a gray cashmere sweater, a silk scarf — along with a large pair of hiking boots, which a kind islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape. Left behind in her cabin were her passport, credit cards and phone.

Hammer, 65, told The Associated Press she was eating her first course, an appetizer of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad, on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise, which was a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.

Suddenly, "We heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn't anything dangerous," she said.

Several passengers concurred, saying crew members for a good 45 minutes told passengers there was a simple "technical problem" that had caused the lights to go off. Seasoned cruisers, however, knew better and went to get their life jackets from their cabins and report to their "muster stations," the emergency stations each passenger is assigned to, they said.

Once there, though, crew members delayed lowering the lifeboats even thought the ship was listing badly, they said.

"We had to scream at the controllers to release the boats from the side," said Mike van Dijk, a 54-year-old from Pretoria, South Africa. "We were standing in the corridors and they weren't allowing us to get onto the boats. It was a scramble, an absolute scramble."

Passengers Alan and Laurie Willits from Wingham, Ontario, celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, said they were watching the magic show in the ship's main theater when they felt an initial lurch, as if from a severe steering maneuver, followed a few seconds later by a "shudder" that tipped trash cans over. The subsequent listing of the ship made the theater curtains seem like they were standing on their side.

"And then the magician disappeared," Laurie Willits said, adding that the panicked audience members fled for their cabins as well.

Once at their life boat station, crew members directed passengers to go upstairs from the fourth floor deck; Alan Willits said he refused.

"I said, 'No, this isn't right.' And I came out and I argued 'When you get this boat stabilized, I'll go up to the fifth floor then," he said. Eventually, his lifeboat was lowered down.

But things didn't improve for passengers once aboard the lifeboats or on land.

"No one counted us, neither in the life boats nor on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French military officer from Marseille. She said there had been no evacuation drill since she boarded in Marseille, France on Jan. 8.

A top Costa executive, Gianni Onorato, said Saturday the Concordia's captain had the liner on its regular, weekly route when it struck a reef.

"The ship was doing what it does 52 times a year, going along the route between Civitavecchia and Savona," a shaken-looking Onorato, who is Costa's director general, told reporters on Giglio, a popular vacation isle about 18 miles off Italy's central west coast. The captain is an 11-year Costa veteran, he said.

He said Costa was cooperating with Italian investigators to find out what went wrong.

Costa Cruises said about 1,000 Italian passengers were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.

Some 30 people were reported injured, most of them suffering only bruises, but at least two people were reported to be in grave condition. Several passengers came off the ferries on stretchers, but it appeared more out of exhaustion and shock than serious injury.

The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on Giglio. Those evacuated by helicopter were taken to the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.

Passengers sat dazed in a middle school opened for them, wrapped in wool or aluminum blankets, with some wearing their life preservers and their shoeless feet covered with aluminum foil. Civil protection crews served them warm tea and bread, but confusion reigned supreme as passengers tried desperately to find the right bus to begin their journey home.

Tanja Berto, from Ebenfurth, Austria, was shuttled from one line to another with her mother and 2-year-old son Bruno, trying to figure out how to get back to Savona, where they began their cruise a week ago.

"It's his birthday today," she said of her son, rolling her eyes as she held Bruno and tended to her mother, who had grown faint and was lying on the ground. "Happy birthday, Bruno."

Survivors far outnumbered Giglio'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.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10:30 p.m., 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."

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, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said.

Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, took turns airlifting survivors 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.

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.

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 sustained damage but no one was injured, ANSA said.

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Enormous MSC Cruise Ship Crashes Into Crowded Venice Port, Injuring at Least Five

By Caleb Jacobs

Posted on Jun 3, 2019 11:35 AM EDT

A commercial cruise ship suffered a catastrophic engine failure off the coast of Venice, Italy on Sunday, leaving it uncontrollable as it headed toward a nearby dock. With no effective way of steering the vessel, it resultantly crashed into the harbor—a hotspot for tourists—injuring five people, according to the Associated Press.

The news has made headlines worldwide with videos of the incident also being posted online, showing the situation from a firsthand perspective:

Operated by MSC, the Opera cruise ship was built to hold more than 2,675 passengers and, in this instance, it was carrying travelers back to Venice after visiting Kotor, Montenegro as well as the Greek cities of Mykonos, Santorini, and Corfu. Two nearby tugboats worked to guide the ship away from the dock after the captain immediately reported the engine failure but failed.

As can be heard in the videos, those aboard the ship and on shore were left wondering aloud what might come of the shipwreck. 

While there are obvious and immediate effects that come with a crash of this magnitude, Italian activists are using the episode to make a political point. Recently, there’s been a swing of protest regarding Venice’s acceptance of cruise ships that, due to their size , block narrow waterways and obstruct tourist views. This was not lost on Twitter after Sunday’s happenings as Italy’s environment minister Sergio Costa posted:

“What happened in the port of Venice is confirmation of what we have been saying for some time. Cruise ships must not sail down the Giudecca. We have been working on moving them for months now … and are nearing a solution.”

Quello che è successo nel porto di #Venezia è la conferma di quello che diciamo da tempo: le #GrandiNavi non devono passare dalla Giudecca. Per questo da mesi insieme ai ministri @DaniloToninelli e @BonisoliAlberto stiamo lavorando per spostarle e siamo vicini alla soluzione — Sergio Costa (@SergioCosta_Gen) June 2, 2019

A politician with the Italian Left party, Nicola Fratoianni, even went as far as to call cruise ships “steel monsters” which “risk carnage” in the seaside town.

Curioso quel Paese che blocca navi che salvano vite e permette a grandi navi di attraversare #Venezia … Situazione intollerabile. Interrogazione in Parlamento, e subito blocco passaggio navi da crociera dal canale della Giudecca #NoGrandiNaviVenezia https://t.co/eff5oAC3hj — nicola fratoianni (@NFratoianni) June 2, 2019

An MSC spokesperson explained to NPR   that the cruise ship is now being moored at the Marittima terminal and has begun passenger operations.

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