Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy

[Host Mike]

"The captain of the Costa Concordia was distracted by guests he had invited onto the bridge in the crucial moments before his cruise liner rammed into rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio, one of the ship's senior officers has claimed.

Silvia Coronica, the vessel's third officer, also told investigators that Francesco Schettino panicked in the aftermath of the crash, rushing "from one part of the bridge to the other".

In the 10 minutes before the collision, he was seem chatting on the bridge with one of the ship's pursers and its head waiter, who had been asked up to the bridge to watch the liner perform a nautical 'fly-by' past his home island.

"The people who came up to the bridge with Schettino were disturbing the ship's navigation," Ms Coronica told investigators.

"The maitre d'hotel was chatting, disturbing the steering, with a consequent impact on concentration."

The ship was travelling at 15 knots as it steamed to within 150 yards of Giglio's coast – too fast for such a delicate operation, the officer added.

The evidence given to investigating judges also revealed scenes of panic down in the engine room, as water began to gush in through the hole torn by a huge lump of granite that was broken off from by the force of the impact.

"Descending down a stairway into deck B, I opened the door and I saw the tear in the hull and the water that was coming in. In the space of two minutes it was completely flooded," said Alberto Fiorito, the engine room's duty officer. "I opened the door to the main electrical room but there was already nearly two metres of water."

He was being interviewed by an Italian television network when a smartly-dressed middle-aged blonde woman employed by Costa Cruises swept into the lobby, ordered him not to do any more interviews, and whisked him away.

When he was interviewed by police in the nearby town of Orbetello several hours later, the computer was no longer with him.

Costa Cruises denied that its employee had obtained the laptop. "After contacting the person involved, Costa Cruises categorically denies that it has received anything at all from Capt Schettino," the company said in a statement."

(and)

"The huge quantities of food that the vessel was carrying – it was at the start of a week-long Mediterranean cruise and had on board more than 4,000 passengers and crew – was rotting and creating a terrible smell."

[Host Mike]

"Legal maneuverings between Captain Schettino’s lawyers and Costa Cruises, which has sought to depict him as the only wrongdoer, took a new turn on Monday. Bruno Leporatti, Captain Schettino’s lawyer, said in a statement that other Costa Cruises officials, including its marine operations director, may share responsibility for the wreck of the 950-foot ship, which cost $563 million when it went into service in 2006.

Mr. Leporatti also said some emergency pumps and the water-tight doors of the Costa Concordia did not work, which may have caused the ship to list heavily to starboard. The vessel was designed to sink symmetrically.

Italian news reports on the shipwreck also added some mysterious elements to the convoluted aftermath. Newspapers said a mysterious woman, possibly a Costa Cruises lawyer or an employee, took Captain Schettino’s laptop computer the morning after the shipwreck from a Giglio hotel where he had spent a short time after coming ashore in a life boat. It was not clear how he would have managed to bring the laptop with him, given earlier accounts of the chaotic escape. Costa Cruises denied the reports. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/world/europe/bodies-of-women-located-on-italian-ship-costa-concordia.html

"A woman thought to be a lawyer may have been sent to silence the captain of the capsized Costa Concordia.

Prosecutors yesterday said Captain Francesco Schettino was seen with the mystery blonde the morning after the disaster, and she may have been sent by Costa Cruises.

They are investigating whether she was told to shut Schettino up and take his personal computer."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2012/01/24/lawyer-thought-to-have-been-sent-to-gag-costa-concordia-captain-115875-23714590/

[Host Mike]

"A WOMAN reported missing by a Hungarian family in Italy's Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster in fact died three years ago, the Hungarian foreign ministry says."

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/family-lies-about-relative-on-italys-costa-concordia-cruise-ship/story-e6frfku0-1226252385026

[Host Mike]

"The Costa Concordia ship’s doctor fears the wreck’s youngest victim - a 5-year-old girl named Dayana - died because her distraught dad went back to their cabin for his medication.

Sandro Cinquini told Italian TV he was one of the last to see William and Dayana Arlotti alive in a crowd of panicking passengers on Deck 4.

“He was very worried, he kept repeating that he had to retrieve his medication,” Cinquini told Canale 5 TV.

Arlotti had recently had an operation, Cinquini said.

“I tried to make him understand that we were steps from the island of Giglio, that if he had already taken his medicine that day we had time to get more,” he said. “The girl was crying constantly. You could not console her.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/costa-concordia-doctor-fears-5-year-old-died-dad-returned-cabin-article-1.1010485

[Host Mike]

"Italian magistrates will be asked to investigate claims that Costa Cruises, owner of the Concordia ocean liner which ran aground off the Italian coast 11 days ago, tried to cover up a similar incident in 2005, when their Fortuna vessel allegedly struck rocks near Sorrento.

Roberto Cappello, who was working as an official photographer for the company at the time, said that the Fortuna appeared to hit rocks during a close approach to the coast near the southern port in May 2005. He said photographs he took showing the listing cabins and damage to the vessel were confiscated by company officials. His allegations will this week be passed to magistrates investigating the Concordia disaster, in which 32 people are feared to have died."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/costa-cruise-hit-rocks-in-2005--and-firm-tried-to-cover-it-up-6293683.html

[Host Mike]

Paoletti, 43, who specialises in cave diving, has pulled more than a few decomposing bodies from shipwrecked trawlers over the years, but has never had to tackle anything close to the the size of the vast 17-deck Concordia.

"Making our way through the debris is difficult and tiring. Visibility ranges from 80 centimetres (30 inches) to 10 centimetres, and we have to check everything -- floating tablecloths, discarded clothes -- for bodies," he said.

The divers search the ship in pairs for security reasons and inch their way through the murky waters at a painstaking pace, often having to squeeze into confined areas where the risk of becoming trapped is great.

They navigate in a zig-zag movement to make sure they cover every area.

"We go down for 50 minutes at a time, with three oxygen tanks strapped to us, and leave one or two along the way in case we start to run out of air. If we're not back in that time, our back up races to find us," Paoletti said.

The ruddy-faced diver from Viterbo near Rome said he has always had a passion for caving and he goes regularly in his spare time. He also attends rigorous training courses with the fire service six times a year.

"One of the biggest risks is that you get tangled up in electrical cables snaking in the water. Scissors are one of the most important bits of equipment. During training, they cover your eyes with a mask, and wrap ropes around you.

"You then have a really short amount of time to cut yourself free... without cutting through your own safety cord -- because that's your life-line, you have to follow that cord back to find your way out of the labyrinth," he said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gfG37W1W1lWMmi157O5pvR_tksOw?docId=CNG.3c38858e7644657b6e98d9e3c9ade916.141

[NSWP]

This Costa Line seems out of control, were there no 'checks and balances' by the parent company..Carnival Corporation?

I have no time for Costa, I lost $4000 in airfares and accommodation when they rescheduled Costa Atlantica out of the New England Cruise I booked 2 years ago, it took me 10 weeks to get my cruise fare back, but no chance with the airfares and accommodation.  Our insurance company would not pay out either on cruise ship rescheduling.

Costa and their adminstration are the pits as far as I am concerned.

[Host Mike]

"Since the Concordia accident, several Italian newspapers have published photos from passengers that appear to show some of the cruise line’s vessels sailing close to islands or picturesque bays such as Amalfi and the island of Procida.

Ron Starzman, managing director of Watershed Management Corp. in New York, said he was aboard Costa Crociere’s Deliziosa cruise ship in September 2010 when it came close to the island of Ponza, adjacent to Rome. “The ship rotated 180 degrees, sounded the horn several times and eventually pulled out, narrowly missing some shoals” by less than 100 meters, he said by e-mail.

Costa Crociere told Bloomberg News in a Jan. 22 e-mail that while a “touristic navigation” five miles from the coast was planned for the Concordia on its Jan. 13 cruise, it was up to the captain to ensure the safety of the route. Foschi said Jan. 16 that the only time he was aware that one of his company’s ships had been allowed to sail close to Giglio was Aug. 9-10, 2011.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/italy-urged-to-curb-cruise-ship-routes-after-accident.html

[Host Mike]

"The search for the missing was continuing as were preparations for the removal of thousands of tonnes of potentially hazardous fuel from the tanks of the half-sunken Costa Concordia cruise ship. The actual pumping of fuel from the vessel's tanks is not expected to begin "before Saturday," Italy's chief rescue official, Franco Gabrielli, said. The procedure to remove the 2,400 tonnes of fuel is expected to last around three weeks."

http://main.omanobserver.om/node/80749

[Host Mike]

The wife of Francesco Schettino, the captain who capsized the Costa Concordia cruise ship insisted that her husband "was not a monster" but admitted that he had once been fined for taking a motorboat too close to the coast.

"Our shared passion is canoeing – to paddle together you have to be in symphony, which is what Francesco and I are," she said. "But we got fined once, because we took a little motorboat too close to the coast."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9036390/Costa-Concordia-captains-wife-says-Schettino-not-a-monster.html

[Host Mike]

"WEALTHY Russian passengers allegedly bribed Costa Concordia crew members to let them skip the queue for spots on lifeboats, it has been claimed.

Authorities are investigating reports from eyewitnesses who told Italian prosecutors that well-dressed Russians from first-class cabins stuffed wads of cash into the hands of crew members in a bid to be some of the first to board the lifeboats, the UK's Sun reported.

The disabled were also left to fend for themselves as the ship listed and began to sink, according to statements given to Italian officials.

Franca Anichini, 52, who lives nearby the shipwreck in Giglio, told German media that she was surprised to see so many men being brought to shore early on.

“I went to the boats as I saw them coming in expecting to see women, children and the injured but all I saw were healthy men and elegant women in evening gowns who were speaking Russian," Mr Anichini said."

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/bodies-found-near-cruise-ship-cafe/story-e6frf7lf-1226252006207

[Host Mike]

"Three alleged fraudsters have been caught after using the Costa Concordia disaster to try and fake the death of a woman.

Police in Hungary arrested the trio after New York lawyer Peter Ronai detected the scam as he represented the six Hungarian survivors from the disaster.

The attempted fraud was spotted when Ronai, who was in Budapest, was asked to take on a seventh case from the disaster."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091298/Costa-Concordia-disaster-Trio-Hungarian-fraudsters-tried-fake-death-woman.html

[Host Mike]

According to AFP, the reports said that police secretly recorded a phone call in which Francesco Schettino told a friend he was following the advice of a manager about what route to take. The manager allegedly told him "pass through here, pass through there."

"In my place, another would not have been so ready to pass there, but they got to me with their 'pass through there, pass through there,'" Schettino said.

"The rocks were there, but the instruments I had weren't showing them, so I went through," he said.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/stricken-costa-concordia-captain-says-company-pressure-made-him-sail-too-close-to-shore/story-e6frf7jx-1226253122103

"(Reuters) - The captain of the doomed Italian liner Costa Concordia said he was told by managers to take his ship close in to shore on the night it ran aground and capsized, according to bugged conversations leaked in Italian newspapers.

The daily La Repubblica published transcripts of a conversation Captain Francesco Schettino had with an unknown person identified only as Fabrizio in which he implicates an unnamed manager of the vessel's owners Costa Cruises."

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/italy-ship-idINDEE80O0AI20120125

[nabs14]

According to the Captain's wife he was fined before for bringing a motorboat too close to the coast.  Now I see the Captain did not learn his lesson & decided to try it again at passengers expense...   

[Host Mike]

"Costa's safety record isn't the only thing that should frighten passengers, say Walker and other legal experts. Also worrisome are the flimsy legal rights passengers have when they book a cruise, outlined in a legal document known as the ticket contract, which is available on the cruise line's website and is normally included with your ticket.

For passengers with future cruise plans, the contract delivers some bad news: If you want a refund, and you're within two weeks of departing on a European cruise, you're out of luck. (If it's anywhere between 44 and 15 days until your vacation, you can get half your money back.)

The contract is equally restrictive as it applies to the Concordia's survivors. The fine print limits the cruise line's liability to about $71,000 per passenger, requires that any claim against the company be filed within a year, restricts the filing venue to a court in Genoa, Italy, and applies Italian law to resolving the dispute.

For cruises from U.S. ports, Costa's contract limits the venue for filing lawsuits to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, effectively turning any lawsuit into a costly federal case. Other ticket language prevents smaller complaints from being brought together as class actions, further limiting passengers' access to justice, say legal experts.

Cruise line claims adjusters often send a series of letters to injured survivors, asking for more information. The time required for correspondence and documentation runs down the clock on any claims, according to David Deehl, an adjunct law professor at the University of Miami and the vice chairman of the American Bar Association's Admiralty and Maritime Law Committee.

"They're appearing to want to settle, asking for more and more information," he says. In fact, they're usually intent on paying the least they can under the law.

One place where cruise lines move quickly is in shoring up their own defense, Deehl notes. "They have their own civil defense lawyers who are often flown right to the ship to interview crew and passengers immediately, locking in their defense theories with sworn testimony," he told me."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/sns-201201240000--tms--traveltrctntt-b20120124jan24,0,2392511.story