Author Topic: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy  (Read 349336 times)

Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #405 on: May 22, 2013, 09:11:09 PM »
"ROME — An Italian judge on Wednesday ordered the captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia to stand trial on manslaughter and other charges related to the deadly capsizing of the vessel off the coast of Tuscany in January 2012.

The judge set a July 9 trial date for the captain, Francesco Schettino, 52. He is accused of causing the ship to run aground, resulting in the deaths of 32 people, and then abandoning the vessel while many of its 4,229 passengers and crew members were still aboard."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/world/europe/costa-concordia-captain-to-be-tried-for-manslaughter.html?_r=0



Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #406 on: May 23, 2013, 11:48:52 AM »
ROME (AP) -- The captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which went aground off the coast of Italy more than a year ago, says he's not frightened by the prospect of going to prison.

http://www.wlos.com/template/inews_wire/wires.international/29f074bc-www.wlos.com.shtml#.UZ5HoNjwGSo


Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #407 on: May 27, 2013, 05:24:26 AM »
"Schettino had offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of three years and four months but prosecutors rejected the deal saying he could face jail-time of up to 20 years if convicted."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329106/Captain-Calamity-Francesco-Schettino-faces-20-years-jail-WILL-stand-trial-Costa-Concordia-shipwreck.html?ito=feeds-newsxml



Offline f-mattox

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #408 on: May 27, 2013, 12:43:53 PM »
Three years and four months for 34 lives?  I'm glad the prosecutors turned down the offer . . . . .offer? . . . .that's an outrage.

Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #409 on: June 02, 2013, 02:41:48 AM »
A catalogue of errors by 53-year-old Schettino are documented in the dossier into the disaster by the Italian maritime authorities.

The captain caused the collision by sailing too fast, too close to shore, and he was distracted by people who had no business on the bridge, it found.

He had failed to consult large-scale maps, and used the wrong landmark on the island to turn the ship. He then delayed sounding the general alarm, and when he did eventually speak to the coastguard, downplayed the seriousness of  the incident.

The report appears to demolish Schettino’s claim that he saved thousands of lives by steering the ship into shore, saying the crash caused the rudder to fail. Instead, a detailed chronology reveals how he left his 4,228 passengers to fend for themselves.

At 9.45pm, the ship ran aground at a rate of 16 knots. As the rocks tore a 150ft gash in the ship’s  belly, the loud scrape and subsequent blackout made it obvious to everyone on board that something was very wrong. Five watertight compartments were immediately submerged, meaning the ship was doomed.

But it took another 31 minutes for Schettino to alert the authorities and it was not until an hour after impact that the order to abandon ship was given. At 11.19pm, with 300 passengers and crew still on board, the captain and officers abandoned the bridge.

Shortly afterwards, when coastguard officials called Schettino’s mobile phone, he had already slipped onto a lifeboat.

He was ordered to return to his vessel but continued towards shore. By the time he reached Giglio, 80 passengers and crew were still struggling to stay alive on the sinking vessel.

Human error is ‘the root cause  of the Costa Concordia casualty’, the report concludes, much of  it the ‘inadequacy’ of the ship’s command and Schettino’s ‘unconventional behaviour’.

But others were also at fault, the report found. Members of the bridge team are said to have been ‘passive’, neglecting to question the captain’s actions and warn him of the impending impact.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332194/Captain-Coward-fled-sinking-cruise-liner-Costa-Concordia-leaving-300-passengers-crew-fate.html

Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #410 on: June 02, 2013, 02:49:53 AM »


[Editor: What's very wrong with this picture? Answer: All lifeboats can't successfully be lowered after the ship is partially sunk on one side]

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/28/article-2332194-0F7834A600000578-257_634x415.jpg


Offline obendus

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #411 on: June 02, 2013, 07:39:14 PM »
ROME (AP) -- The captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which went aground off the coast of Italy more than a year ago, says he's not frightened by the prospect of going to prison.

Well now, that should make us all feel better.

34 souls... I hope he is compelled to address the families.

Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #412 on: June 04, 2013, 03:49:44 PM »
While it did not absolve Costa Cruises’ shoreside oversight, the report said Capt. Francesco Schettino lied about the extent of damages to authorities. It further said that his delays in declaring an emergency and in deciding to abandon ship had fatal consequences.

Had passengers been called to lifeboats earlier, “all of them could have reached their salvation out of the Concordia,” the report said.

The report variously describes the evacuation as adequate and chaotic and faults the bridge team for being too passive. But it said the key mistakes lay in the navigation planning phase of the voyage and in Schettino’s reluctance to accept that the ship was sinking.

“The ship was sailing too close to the coastline, in a poorly lit shore area, under the Master’s command who had planned to pass at an unsafe distance at night time at high speed (15.5 knots). The danger was considered so late that the attempt to avoid grounding was useless,” the report said.

Schettino’s attitude in reviewing the navigation plan was “arbitrary,” the report asserted.

“The passive attitude of the staff on the bridge is just as reprehensible,” it added, chiding the officers for failing to waive Schettino off the risky course despite having criticized it among themselves before his arrival on the bridge.
The Concordia hit the rock that ripped a 175-foot gash in its side at 9:45 p.m.

Rather than sound the emergency alarm, Schettino told passengers only that the ship had an electrical blackout, a lie he would repeat to the Civitavecchia harbor master and the Coast Guard station there, the report said.

Not until 10:33 p.m. was the general emergency alarm sounded, the first announcement calling passengers to their muster station followed at 10:36 p.m. By that time, the ship was already listing 11 degrees. It isn’t until 10:54 p.m. that the ship’s second officer communicated “abandon ship” in English over the public address system.

By that time, some passengers had boarded lifeboats on their own. The report said many procedures set for emergency management were not followed.

“There was chaos and confusion, lack of communication,” the report stated. “In other words, a complete disorganization, mainly because nobody by the bridge coordinated the emergency according with the muster list and the related procedure for abandoning ship.”

Still, the crew performed “adequately” under increasingly dire conditions, it said.

It also noted that while the work language of the ship was Italian, officers such as the Bulgarian first engineer said they didn’t fully understand Italian.

Conversely, the helmsman said he sometimes couldn’t follow orders given by the captain in English.

The report said had passengers been mustered at roughly 10 p.m., when the bridge first learned that three watertight compartments of the ship had flooded, they could have been in lifeboats before 11:12 p.m., when listing of 30 degrees started to make it hard to lower them to safety.

Although the Italian Navigation Code says the captain must be the last person onboard to abandon ship, the report says Schettino departed at 11:19 p.m. with 200 to 300 passengers and crew still aboard the Concordia, leaving only a single officer temporarily on the bridge to manage their escape.

At 12:30 a.m. the Coast Guard reached Schettino by radio in a lifeboat, which he said he had tumbled into as the ship listed. He was ordered to return to the ship but did not.

In accordance with the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, the Concordia was designed to survive the flooding of two of its watertight compartments beneath the bulkhead deck, but five compartments were breached, which led to the accelerated listing.

In addition, once it rose high enough, water began spreading through openings in the bulkhead deck to other compartments. The ship was built with a double bottom, but the gash occurred farther up on the side, where only a single hull kept water outside the ship."

http://www.travelweekly.com/Cruise-Travel/Italian-investigators-detail-Concordia-chaos-and-confusion/?a=cruise&cid=eltrcruise

Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #413 on: June 14, 2013, 02:58:26 AM »
"The Moldovan dancer seen dining with Captain Francesco Schettino the night the Costa Concordia ran aground is to seek damages from the captain and the ship’s parent company."

"Immediately after the accident she reportedly told investigators that she was “in love” with Schettino."

Cemortan’s Italian lawyer Gianluca Madonna on Wednesday told The Telegraph his client rejected any suggestion of a relationship between the couple and that she was seeking damages against the captain and the company which had failed to defend her publicly or keep its promise to rehire her.

She is also considering separate action against several Italian newspapers, magazines and TV channels who allegedly slandered her reputation for suggesting she had been involved with the captain.


“She is a hard worker and is a beautiful dancer, very professional,” Mr Madonna said. “The media has presented her as a prostitute.” He said his client was angry at the way she had been abandoned by the company and would be seeking damages “between 200,000 and 300,000 euros” (£255,000) in compensation — well above the 11,000 euros being offered by the company to survivors.

“The action against Costa Cruises is for all the problems they created,” Mr Madonna said. “She paid for a ticket on the ship and received a key to the room an hour and a half later. Her room was on the same private floor as Schettino’s room.”

He said neither Schettino nor the company had said anything to defend her.

“On the night of the accident she risked her life helping Russian passengers because there was no one on board who spoke Russian. Since the accident she has not worked regularly and Costa did not renew her contract.”

When contacted by The Telegraph through her Italian agent today, Ms Cemortan sent an email response saying she was out of the country."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10101235/Dancer-at-centre-of-Costa-Concordia-crash-to-sue-Captain-Schettino.html




Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #414 on: June 14, 2013, 03:16:25 AM »
"Among other damning revelations in the 176-page dossier is that the coastguard were not alerted to the incident until they were phoned by a passenger’s mother.

Half an hour after the collision, Captain Francesco Schettino had yet to put out a distress signal.

But by this time a mother of one of the passengers had informed police of an accident, after receiving a call saying that the ship was in blackout, a ceiling had collapsed and those on board were putting on their life jackets.

A catalogue of errors by 53-year-old Schettino are documented in the dossier into the disaster by the Italian maritime authorities.

The captain caused the collision by sailing too fast, too close to shore, and he was distracted by people who had no business on the bridge, it found.

He had failed to consult large-scale maps, and used the wrong landmark on the island to turn the ship. He then delayed sounding the general alarm, and when he did eventually speak to the coastguard, downplayed the seriousness of  the incident.

At 9.45pm, the ship ran aground at a rate of 16 knots. As the rocks tore a 150ft gash in the ship’s  belly, the loud scrape and subsequent blackout made it obvious to everyone on board that something was very wrong. Five watertight compartments were immediately submerged, meaning the ship was doomed.

But it took another 31 minutes for Schettino to alert the authorities and it was not until an hour after impact that the order to abandon ship was given. At 11.19 pm, with 300 passengers and crew still on board, the captain and officers abandoned the bridge.

Human error is ‘the root cause  of the Costa Concordia casualty’, the report concludes, much of  it the ‘inadequacy’ of the ship’s command and Schettino’s ‘unconventional behaviour’.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332194/Captain-Coward-fled-sinking-cruise-liner-Costa-Concordia-leaving-300-passengers-crew-fate.html



Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #415 on: June 26, 2013, 11:32:44 AM »
"(By Christopher Livesay) Grosseto, June 25 - The half-sunk Costa Concordia cruise ship that has been stranded off the coast of Tuscany since striking a rock formation at the start of 2012 could be righted from its current position this September, Italy's civil protection agency said Tuesday. "We will have a clearer idea of the timing after checks on the submerged section and then know if the boat can leave the (waters around) the island in November or March," avoiding winter, Civil Protection Department head Franco Gabrielli said on a visit to the Island of Giglio."

http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/51694/Concordia-cruise-ship-could-be-righted-in-September.html


Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #416 on: July 03, 2013, 11:01:12 AM »
"Marc Jay Bern and Mitchell Proner, lead Attorneys for 104 survivors of the 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster, announced that their clients have won another victory against Carnival Corporation when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit remanded their claims yesterday to the Florida State Court for continued litigation. The July 1, 2013 order affirmed the District Court's prior remand order, concerning two cases, Abeid-Saba, et al., v. Carnival Corporation et al., (Docket No.: 12-CV-23513) and Scimone, et al. v. Carnival Corp. et al. ("Scimone II"), (Docket No.: 12-CV-23505). Both cases arise from plaintiffs' claims that they were injured when the Costa Concordia capsized after grounding off the Italian coast."

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130702-908981.html

Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #417 on: July 05, 2013, 03:56:57 PM »
"He has defended himself saying that the ship was already tilting at a  90-degree angle and that he was coordinating the rescue from the shore.

 Schettino says he slipped and fell onto a lifeboat.

 The court will rule on the charges he faces of multiple manslaughter,  abandoning ship and causing environmental damage but the trial by media has  already delivered its guilty verdict.

 A widely quoted piece of evidence against him is a phone call in which a  coast guard official is heard upbraiding Schettino and ordering him to “get  back on board, for fuck’s sake”.   

Several passengers have said they saw Schettino drinking on the night of  the tragedy in the company of an attractive young blonde, later identified as  Moldovan passenger Domnica Cemortan."

 One of his former teachers at the prestigious Nino Bixio Nautical Institute  told AFP that Schettino was a risk taker and pointed out that the ship was  travelling far too fast at the moment of impact.

 “There’s a character problem there,” Antonio Ferraiuolo said in a recent  interview.


 While acknowledging he could be a show-off, several former colleagues have  however defended Schettino when questioned by investigators.

Fellow Costa captain Mauro Mautone said he was “a very serious, reliable,  well-trained person”.    Another, Mario Moretta, said Schettino was “well-trailed and with an  excellent skill-set”.    Schettino’s lawyers, Domenico and Francesco Pepe, have said they will show  the court that “no single person was responsible” for the disaster.

They plan to probe the role played by Costa managers, the type of steel  used to build the ship, as well as the apparent malfunctioning of sealed doors  and back-up generators on board.

 Another group of lawyers calling themselves “Justice for the Concordia”,  who are suing Costa on behalf of dozens of survivors, have said the company’s  managers should also stand trial.

http://www.nst.com.my/latest/coward-or-scapegoat-italy-cruise-captain-on-trial-1.313618








Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #418 on: July 05, 2013, 10:01:16 PM »
"Rome - Francesco Schettino, captain of the ill-fated Costa Concordia cruise ship will go on trial in Italy on Tuesday, facing manslaughter charges over the liner's tragic sinking which cost 32 lives.

The courtroom drama could involve up to 450 witnesses and 250 plaintiffs, although the actual start of deliberations may have to be postponed because of a lawyers' strike on the same day."

"Schettino has maintained media silence for months.

In the few remarks he has made, he has said he is "not afraid" of going to prison.

"I am at peace with my conscience," he said.

"I will go to trial knowing that I can explain what happened, calmly."

Asked whether he felt guilty about the lives lost in the disaster, he said: "I do not write fate".


http://www.news24.com/World/News/Shipwreck-captain-Schettino-to-go-on-trial-20130705


Offline Host Mike

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Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« Reply #419 on: July 09, 2013, 04:01:18 PM »
"Captain Francesco Schettino, dubbed Italy’s “most hated man” by tabloids over the spectacular crash of his cruise ship in 2012 with the loss of 32 lives, went on trial on Tuesday charged with manslaughter.

The 52-year-old, also dubbed “Captain Coward” over accusations that he abandoned ship while terrified passengers were still trapped onboard, looked tense as he arrived for the start of the trial in Grosseto.

It is being held in a local theatre in the city, the closest to the site of the wreck of the Costa Concordia on the island of Giglio, due to the large numbers of survivors from the tragedy expected to attend.

Schettino, wearing large sunglasses and a bright blue suit, came in through the press entrance by mistake and was immediately mobbed by reporters, fending them off and asking to be let through.

Schettino, who is not being detained during the trial, has asked for television cameras not to be allowed in.

“Otherwise it would be a film,” he said in an interview with Italian daily Il Messaggero.

“There has been media havoc since the tragedy... This is not some village festival, this is a trial. There are people who died and a man who will try to explain,” he said.

“I really think the truth will out,” he said."

The hearing was cut short after just a few minutes because of a national lawyers’ strike and the trial was postponed to July 17.

With his slicked-back hair and macho swagger, Schettino has been portrayed as a villain who was showing off in front of a female guest by performing a risky “salute” manoeuvre which ended in tragedy.

“Madonna, what have I done?” he was heard gasping on audio recordings from the bridge just after the crash.


But his defence team has said that while he made mistakes he should not be the sole defendant, and the ship’s owner Costa Crociere, Europe’s top cruise operator, should share at least some of the blame.

Lawyers for some survivors say he is a scapegoat.

Locals in Grosseto also showed a degree of sympathy for the captain.

“We cannot just crucify Schettino,” said 28-year-old Maria at a bar in the city centre.

As he unloaded groceries outside a store, Giacomo Melluso said: “Maybe it wasn’t all Schettino’s fault.”

Up to 450 witnesses and 250 plaintiffs could be called during the trial, which has been long awaited by the families of the victims and survivors who have complained about delays in Italy’s justice system.

Trials in Italy can last for months or even years."

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/international/2013/July/international_July233.xml&section=international