Italian news reports say sixty nine passengers aboard a luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy are still missing once recovering 3 bodies from ocean and evacuating over 4.000.
The Costa Concordia, a luxury cruise ship, was lying flat concerning twelve hours once the ship ran aground off Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot gash within the hull, the Italian coast guard said.
The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its starboard facet as seen from the Giglio harbor, once running aground off the little Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. the luxurious cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash within the hull and forcing the evacuation of some four,200 folks from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. the quantity of dead and injured isn't nevertheless confirmed Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its starboard facet as seen from the Giglio harbor, once running aground off the little Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. the luxurious cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash within the hull and forcing the evacuation of some four,200 folks from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. the quantity of dead and injured isn't nevertheless confirmed Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
The ANSA news agency said, quoting the prefect's workplace in Grosseto, that authorities have accounted for four,165 of the four,234 those who had boarded the liner.
Passengers complained the crew didn't provide directions on a way to evacuate the ship which the evcauation drill was solely scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
"It was thus unorganized, our evacuation drill was scheduled for five p.m.," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had come into being on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. "We had joked what if one thing had happened these days."
Helicopters plucked to safety thusme fifty those who were trapped on the ship once it listed so badly they could not launch lifeboats, Paolillo told The Associated Press in Rome by phonephone from his command within the Tuscan port town of Livorno.
Passenger Mara Parmegiani, a journalist, told the ANSA news agency that "it was sort of a scene from the Titanic."
Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered close to the harbor of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, once stepping off a ferry from Giglio. She was sporting elegant dinner garments -- a cashmere sweater, a silk scarf -- in conjunction with an outsized try of hiking boots, that a form islander gave her once she lost her shoes within the scramble to flee, in conjunction with her passport, credit cards and phone.
Hammer, 65, told The Associated Press that she was eating her 1st course, an appetizer of squid, on her 1st night aboard her first-ever cruise, that was a present to her and her husband, Gert, from her native church where she volunteers.
Suddenly, "we heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and that we went out of the dining area and that we were told it wasn't something dangerous," she said.
The passengers were then instructed to place on life jackets and take to the life rafts however, Hammer said, they could not get into the boats as a result of the cruise liner was tilting such a lot the boats could not be lowered into the cold, night sea. The passengers were eventually rescued by one among many boats within the space that came to their aid.
"No one counted us, neither within the life boats or on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French military officer from Marseille. She said there had been no evacuation drill since she boarded in France on Jan. 8.
As dawn neared, a painstaking search of the 950-foot long ship's interior was being conducted to check if anyone might need been trapped within, Paolillo said.
"There are some two,000 cabins, and therefore the ship is not straight," Paolillo said, pertaining to the Concordia's dramatic over 45-degree tilt on its right facet. "I'll leave it to your imagination to grasp how they (the rescuers) are operating as they move through it."
Some Concordia crew members were still aboard to assist the coast guard rescuers, he said.
Paolillo said it wasn't immediately known if the dead were passengers or crew, nor were the nationalities of the victims immediately known. It wasn't clear how they died.
Some thirty folks were reported injured, most of them suffering solely bruises, however a minimum of 2 folks were reported in grave condition.
Paolillo said the Concordia was believed to possess set sail with three,206 passengers and one,023 crew members.
Some passengers, apparently in panic, had jumped off the boat into the ocean, a Tuscany-based government official, Grosseto prefect Giuseppe Linardi, was quoted as saying. Authorities were attempting to get a full passenger and crew list from Costa, so that they might do a roll decision to work out who may be missing.
The evacuees were taking refuge in colleges, hotels, and a church on the little island of Giglio, a preferred vacation isle concerning eighteen miles off Italy's central west coast. Those evacuated by helicopter were flown to Grosseto, whereas others, rescued by native ferries pressed into emergency service, took survivors to the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.
Passengers sat dazed in a very middle faculty opened for them, wrapped in woolen blankets with some sporting their life preservers and their shoeless feet lined with aluminum foil.
Survivors so much outnumbered Giglio's one,500 residents, and island Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an charm for islanders -- "anyone with a roof" to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.
Paolillo said the precise circumstances of the accident were still unclear, however that the primary alarm went off concerning 10:30 p.m., concerning 3 hours once the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia, en route to its 1st port of decision, Savona, in northwestern Italy.
The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's workplace within the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" -- it wasn't clear if it would have hit a rocky reef within the waters off Giglio -- "ripping a gash one hundred sixty feet across" within the facet of the ship, and commenced absorbing water.
The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, close to Giglio's little port, to form evacuation by lifeboat easier.
But once the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was now not possible, Paolillo said.
Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, were taking turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to soundly. A coast guard member was airlifted aboard the vessel to assist folks get aboard atiny low basket so that they may well 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 ocean, ranging from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.
It said concerning one,000 Italian passengers were onboard, also as over five hundred Germans, concerning one hundred sixty French and concerning one,000 crew members.
The Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters, ANSA reported. In 2008, when sturdy winds buffeted Palermo, the cruise ship banged against the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered injury however nobody was injured, ANSA said.
Source : www.foxnews.com
