Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy

[Host Mike]

"It was also claimed that Capt Schettino had previously crashed another cruise ship.

In June 2010 he sailed the Aida Blu cruise ship too fast into the German port of Warnemunde causing damage.

“I did not know the speed limit and have not received notification of an infraction from the relevant authorities,” Capt Schettino told his employers in writing, adding there were “probably other factors” behind the crash."

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/travel/news/cruise-captain-not-wearing-glasses/story-fn32891l-1226288485908

"Captain Francesco Schettino 'manoeuvred at a speed of 7.7 to 7.9 knots during entry into the port of Warnemunde, causing damage to the Aida Blu cruise ship.' The incident happened in June 2010.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108790/Costa-Concordia-Captain-Francesco-Schettino-crashed-ANOTHER-cruise-ship.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[Host Mike]

"Catalano said Ambrosio ordered the evacuation of the listing vessel before the captain had made up his mind to do it. “He ordered the lifeboats to be put to sea from deck number four.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/03/costa-concordia-captain-not-wearing-his-glasses-night-of-deadly-shipwreck-lawyer-says/

[Host Mike]

"Leaked documents published on Thursday contained claims of a hard-partying atmosphere on board two Costa Crociere ships including the Costa Concordia, with officers seen snorting cocaine and getting drunk on a regular basis.

The revelation was made as former Costa Cruises employees told prosecutors investigating the Concordia disaster that officers 'took drugs' while on duty and molested female staff members.

One woman, a nurse identified only as Valentina B and who worked with under fire Concordia skipper Francesco Schettino, claimed he regularly 'used women as goods to be bartered with.'

She described how she had been on the liner Atlantica with spineless Schettino, 52, who is accused of abandoning the Concordia after he steered it on to rocks and left more than 30 people dead, for a month between January and February 2010.

Her damning revelations to investigating prosecutor Francesco Verusio, were published by La Stampa newspaper and she said of her experiences with Genoa based Costa: 'I found corruption, prostitution and drugs.

'Do not tell me it’s my word against them - I saw directly with my own eyes senior officers take cocaine.

'To prove it all you need to do is carry out an examination of their hair.'

Her claims come just days after a cocaine test on strands of Schettino’s hair tested positive for cocaine but his legal team have asked for a second examination as they dispute the results and he has insisted that he does not drink or take drugs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108790/Costa-Concordia-Captain-Francesco-Schettino-crashed-ANOTHER-cruise-ship.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[Host Mike]

Other survivors recalled the chaos aboard the ship as it listed to one side, accusing the captain of abandoning the ship and the crew of incompetence.

Schettino "did not slip or fall onto a life boat," as he has claimed. "I saw him as he abandoned the ship with four other people," Giuseppe Grammatico, a passenger who now acts as a lawyer for a Sicilian family, told the online edition of daily Corriere della Sera.

The three experts appointed by judge Valeria Montesarchio were also tasked with assessing whether the proper evacuation procedures were adopted by the crew."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/experts-appointed-in-costa-concordia-trial-20120304-1uak4.html

[Host Mike]

"More likely, salvagers would rely on cranes. It would not be easy—the wreck is far too massive for any single crane, Lacey says. The cranes not only would have to turn the ship upright, but hold it in place to keep it from sliding downward. To make their task easier, salvage teams would want to pump out as much water as possible, which would mean patching the massive gashes in its hull so that water does not rush back in, says Peter Tromp, manager at Dutch wreck removal company Euro Demolition.

Tromp doubts it could be done. Euro Demolition and Texas-based salvage firm T&T Bisso are partnering on a proposal to cut up the ship. "We think there's too much weight and too much damage to refloat it," Tromps says. Using cranes armed with metal shears capable of slicing five-centimeter-thick steel, the companies would carve the wreck into liftable chunks 200 to 300 metric tons in weight. Afterward, they would use electromagnets three meters in diameter to clean the seafloor of debris.

Towing, if it can be done, would be faster. "I've heard it's feasible to do it within six months," Lacey says. If Tromp and his colleagues do end up doing a chop job on the Costa Concordia, they estimate they can have it done in eight to 10 months."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=raise-it-or-raze-it-how-will-italian-cruise-ship-be-salvaged&page=2

[Host Mike]

"The Italian owners of the Costa Concordia ship that capsized off the Tuscan coast are considering six bids to salvage the vessel, all of which envision a 10-12 month operation."

http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-09/business/31140752_1_bids-ship-marine-sanctuary

[Host Mike]

"Costa Concordia is being written off as a total loss by parent company Carnival Corporation.

The company is to receive $515 million in insurance for the crippled vessel which run around with 4,200 passengers and crew on board with the loss of at least 25 lives off the Italian island of Giglio in January.

This will offset the value of the six year old vessel which has been deemed to be a “constructive total loss”. It was originally thought the ship could have been salvaged."

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2012/03/09/39833/costa-concordia-a-total-write-off-says-carnival.html

[Host Mike]

Micky Arison learned of the disaster aboard one of his company’s ships in January the way many of the rest of us did: via social networking.

He said he immediately emailed Costa Crociere chairman and CEO Pier Luigi Foschi, who was on a ship in the Caribbean. At that point, neither knew the grounding of the Costa Concordia with more than 4,200 people on board would turn into a disaster that killed 25 and left seven others missing."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/09/2684790/carnivals-micky-arison-speaks.html



“I have a lot of faith in Pier [Foschi] and his team,” Arison said."

[Host Mike]

“Costa is beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, but it will take some time to get there,” [Carnival Corp. vice chairman and chief operating officer Howard] Frank said in the teleconference call with analysts. “So there should be no doubt, we view Costa as a great company and a great brand, with a terrific management team and with a great future.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/09/2684790_p2/carnivals-micky-arison-speaks.html

[Host Mike]

“Obviously, I am very sorry it happened,” the Carnival chairman and CEO told the Herald. “When you have 100 ships out there, sometimes unfortunate things happen, but as I said, it was an accident. We as a company do everything we can to encourage the highest of safety standards.”

“I believe they’ll work their way through this. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible accident, but that’s what it was,” said Arison, who also owns the Miami Heat."

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Arison-on-Costa-Concordia-Wreck-I-Am-Very-Sorry-It-Happened-142108443.html

[Host Mike]

The stricken cruise liner Costa Concordia off the Isola del Giglio in January 2012. Greenpeace warned that chemicals from a cruise ship wreck were oozing into the sea around Italy's picturesque Giglio Island but the environment ministry said the levels were not "significant".

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-greenpeace-pollution-italy-cruise-ship.html

[Host Mike]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/03/08/what-do-you-do-with-a-sunken-cruise-ship/

[Host Mike]

"ROME - Underwater thieves have evaded an array of laser systems that measure millimetric shifts in the Costa Concordia shipwreck and 24-hour surveillance by the Italian coast guard and police to haul off a symbolic booty - the ship's bell. "

Judicial sources said on Thursday thieves nabbed the ship's bell more than two weeks ago from one of the decks of the Costa Concordia, which is submerged in 8 meters (26 feet) of water.

Investigators suspect more than one person was involved in stealing the heavy bell, etched with the ship's name and 2006, the year it was christened. Ships bells were traditionally used to signal half-hour intervals in a four-hour watch.

I can only guess that someone took it as a sort of morbid memento," Giglio's mayor, Sergio Ortelli, told Reuters.

"In my mind, the missing bell is of no importance. We have the ship's statue of the Madonna in our church, and that for us has much more symbolic meaning."

Divers recovered the meter-tall plaster statue of the Madonna in January from the ship's chapel and gave the statute to the parish priest of Giglio."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46747552/ns/travel-news/#.T2NkMnnCaSo

[Host Mike]

London, Mar 16 (ANI): The overall cost of refloating Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the Italian coast in January this year, would be 'far beyond' 100 million Euros, a dredging and maritime services company bidding for the task has said.
 
Peter Berdowski, the chief executive of Royal Boskalis Westminster, said recovering the capsized ship was "an operation without precedent".
 
"You're not talking about an operation of a few dozen millions but something that goes far beyond 100 million Euros," The Telegraph quoted Berdowski, as saying.
 
"This is an operation without precedent. You have to imagine a big fat whale the size of a block of flats lying on its side, accidentally supported by two rocks," he added.

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2012/03/16/275886-Refloating-capsized-Costa-Concordia-could-cost-far-beyond-100m-euro-.html

[Host Mike]

Looking for a relaxing read en route to your cruise? Then don't buy Fatal Voyage, The Wrecking of the Costa Concordia, a Kindle Singles e-book that takes an in-depth look at the modern day Titanic.

Written by journalist John Hooper, the e-book covers the worst passenger ship disaster since the Titanic in engaging detail. Numerous interviews with survivors describe plates falling as the ship's two-story dining room listed, the dark passageways where passengers crawled to reach an outside deck, the confusion around the lifeboats as the crew, acting without clear orders from above, tried to maintain control.

Hooper's experience as a Rome-based reporter for the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper stands him in good stead. The book contains details about the sinking that never made the U.S. coverage, including the Italians' collective embarrassment around one of their own, Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino."

http://www.gadling.com/2012/03/14/must-read-fatal-voyage-the-wrecking-of-the-costa-concordia-e-b/