"Passengers complained that the evacuation was delayed and disorganised, exacerbating the panic on board.
Some complained that the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate the ship, with a drill only scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
"It was so unorganised. Our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5pm," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, in the US. "We had joked what if something had happened today [Friday]."
Passenger Mara Parmegiani told the Italian news agency Ansa that "it was like a scene from the Titanic".
Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, said she was eating her first course when the ship ran aground.
"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.
The passengers were then instructed to put on lifejackets and take to the lifeboats. But Hammer, who was travelling with her husband, Gert, on her first ever cruise trip, said people could not get into the lifeboats because the liner was listing so badly that they could not be lowered into the sea."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/14/italian-cruise-ship-runs-aground"No one counted us, neither in 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 290-meter (950-foot) long ship's interior was being conducted to see if anyone might have been trapped inside, Paolillo said.
"There are some 2,000 cabins, and the ship isn't straight," Paolillo said, referring to the Concordia's dramatic more than 45-degree tilt on its right side. "I'll leave it to your imagination to understand how they (the rescuers) are working as they move through it."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/reports-cruise-ship-aground-off-italy-dead-15359045?page=2#.TxFpooHCaSo