The crash of the Costa Concordia liner (2012). Why did the Costa Concordia sink?
An Italian company was wrecked off the coast of Italy. Although what happened did not biggest disaster at sea in terms of the number of victims, but the very fact that the new ship, a multi-deck liner equipped with everything necessary equipment, sank in a matter of hours near the shore, it became with a strong blow in the cruise industry. But the saddest thing was that what happened was not the result of a combination of circumstances or influence adverse factors, but was caused solely by the human factor.
The Costa Concordia liner was built at the Italian Fincantieri shipyard in Genoa. The laying of the ship took place on January 19, 2004, and the ship went on its maiden voyage on July 14, 2006. The ship was built by order of Costa Crociere (Costa Cruises), which is part of the cruise corporation Carnival Corporation & plc.
The liner had 17 decks. The passenger capacity of the ship was 3780 people, the crew was 1100 people. The liner belonged to the Concordia class and the ships of the same type were Costa Serena (2007), Carnival Splendor (2008), Costa Pacifica (2009), Costa Favolosa (2011), Costa Fascinosa (2012). Differences of ships of this class from others in the design of the ship, extended wellness area and spa area.
On the evening of January 13, the Costa Concordia left Civitavecchia (a port located near Rome) on a Mediterranean cruise bound for Savona. At the time of the crash that occurred in the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Giglio, off the coast Italian region Tuscany, there were 4252 people on board the liner: 3229 passengers and 1023 crew members.
The crew members, led by Captain Francesco Schettino, did not immediately inform the passengers of what had happened. Panic broke out on board. The evacuation of people from the liner continued throughout the night. Coast guard vessels and lifeboats took part in it, and a helicopter was also involved. The rescue of people was complicated by the fact that many were blocked in the cabins of the liner, and several people fell overboard when the ship ran aground. As a result of the tragedy, 32 people died. On January 14, the ship almost completely sank.
The investigation of the disaster did not take much time, but its results shocked no less than death. cruise ship. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the infinity of the universe": this expression of Einstein best describes what happened.
Responsibility for the sinking of the ship was assigned to the ex-captain of Costa Concordia Francesco Schettino, who was one of the first to leave the sinking ship. During the judicial investigation, he admitted that the cause of the crash was the unauthorized deviation of the ship from the course. As the reasons why he allowed the route change, he.
“I approached Giglio in order to please the crew member, Antonello Tievoli, who hails from the island. And also to welcome the former captain of the Costa Concordia, Mario Palombo, also a native of these places,” said Schettino.
In 2013-2014, the ship was lifted, after which it was delivered in a floating dock to Genoa for subsequent disposal.
In the autumn of 2014, the authorities of the Italian region of Tuscany, off the coast of which the liner Costa Concordia, stated that the region suffered serious damage and estimated it at . And to the remains of the ship's hull, located in the port of Genoa, were. At the same time, the cost of the rescue operation, as well as the lifting and towing of the ship, cost more than €1.2 billion.
By the fall of 2016, Costa Concordia was completely scrapped.
And two years ago, in February 2015, an end was put to the fate of Francesco Schettino. And although the prosecutor's office, which offered to sentence the ex-captain of Costa Concordia to 2697 years, softened the requirements to a quarter of a century in prison, as a result, the ex-captain of Costa Concordia received only
Hello, dear readers, subscribers, friends and random visitors, Vladimir Raichev is in touch with you. How can you hear me, welcome, welcome? Have you heard anything about the wreck of the Costa Concordia? Surely heard, I already wrote about it.
I think it would not be out of place to refresh your knowledge about this disaster, check out this edition of Euronews:
I want to note that initially the course of the Costa Concordia liner was changed, according to the captain, he was asked about this by a colleague who was on board. Well, think about changing course - is that a problem? But that's just how it seems.
Reasons for the crash of the liner
Missing on the ship detailed maps to change course, so the crew was essentially going blind. Oriented, as they say, by sound. Do you think this is normal? And if the fate is that there are more than 4,000 people on board?
Another well-known problem was that there was a person at the helm of the liner who could hardly understand the captain's commands. this is fixed by the ship's independent systems (think of it as a sort of ship's black boxes).
To turn the ship around the right direction the helmsman took more than 13 seconds. Just imagine, 13 seconds to start executing the command after receiving the command. Tough, right?
After receiving a hole, the ship still drifted for several tens of minutes and the evacuation from the ship was not carried out. The team did not know how to act in the event of an emergency. Doesn't it remind you of anything? The story is very similar to the sinking of the Titanic. Don't you think so?
The opinion of the captain of the liner SS Navigator Maxim Melnikov on the causes of the disaster
I shared my thoughts with you, but I also have an interview with the captain of the SS Navigator ship of Regent Seven of thr Seas Cruises, our compatriot Maxim Melnikov. Everything he said was left without editing, I present it as it is. The interview was given immediately after the crash.
The immediate cause is human error. But what led to it, and how did everything that followed happen? To answer these questions, we must wait at least for the preliminary results of the investigation.
There is a very thin line between recklessness and virtuoso navigation. The captain admitted that he wanted to salute his senior colleague, who was on the shore, with a maneuver. Well, what can I say: It worked! This is black humor. But seriously, a very dubious decision - at night in cramped sailing conditions on a 300-meter vessel, and even at an unsafe speed.
Based on your personal experience work and communication with Italian sailors, including captains, I can say that in general this good specialists. But to say that they are all "one of the best in the world", I would not. Although depending on whom to compare. In any case, neither our sailors nor the Croats are inferior to them in anything. But again, everything is very individual, especially when it comes to captains.
For a number of reasons, there are a lot of Italian captains in the cruise industry. I personally worked and know seven people, all of them are strong specialists. But in my opinion, the British and Scandinavians are a cut above in many ways.
The crews of the ships are now mixed. For example, I have 42 nationalities per 400 crew members. There are not enough people, and especially good sailors. Over the past 15 years, the cruise industry has grown at such a pace that they simply do not have time to train specialists with the required qualifications. Hence the staff turnover with all the ensuing consequences.
It would be wrong to divide crew members according to nationality, although there are some peculiarities in managing people from different countries. For example, you cannot raise your voice at Filipinos - this does not give the expected effect, they simply fall into a stupor, take offense and stop working.
But with the "Mediterranean" people you can make some noise, they themselves are - with hot blood. The main reason for hiring Asians is that they give the best value for money today, they are ready to work on a ship for 10 months, they know English well, they don’t make noise, they are unpretentious in everyday life, they willingly obey.
A major drawback is that they are not able to command the so-called "white people". As a result, real crowd control is not implemented very well.
On the other hand, who can really do it when the ship is at 60 degrees? Under normal conditions, with a roll of 5 degrees - not comfortable, 10 degrees - anxious, 20-30 degrees - sentry! The best team by nationality is a multinational team, but this is almost unrealistic today, especially on large cruise ships.
The captain states that he was swept into the lifeboat due to a list, which could well have happened under the circumstances. Only with him were, as I understood from the news, his Second-in-Command and one (one) Deck Officer.
Usually the captain and staff captain are assigned to the rafts (not lifeboats) that are the last to leave the ship. Therefore, not a “code of honor” should apply here, but an elementary alarm schedule, which is the main document for the fight for damage. And the code of honor is good when honor itself has a place to be.
I once passed exams to the captain mentor - the former captain of the Nakhimov, after his return from prison. Was it worth it for moral reasons for him to take exams from young navigators? On the other hand, for one beaten they give two unbeaten.
You can also ask about the fate of the captain of the Sea Dimond or another Greek eccentric who left the ship to sink in a storm and flew away by helicopter in order to “lead the rescue operation more efficiently.”
I wanted to be short - but took it to the quick! Let's build Russian cruise ships. And then I recently anchored here 300 meters from the yacht Eclipse, one of the well-known Russian oligarch. So there you can easily accommodate a person of 500 passengers, if you make some room.
We all really miss our passengers, although here, on my ship, we call them "guests" - after all, 6-star status obliges even in small things.
There should not be a "code of honor", but an elementary alarm schedule, which is the main document for the fight for damage. And the code of honor is good when honor itself has a place to be.
After such an interview, it is probably pointless to comment on something. There is an old Russian proverb:
Not knowing the ford - do not poke your head into the water.
It seems to me that the captain's Italian temperament played a cruel joke on him. And what do you think? Write your opinion in the comments. I'll be waiting.
The liner "Costa Concordia" ("Costa Concordia") holds a sad record: it is the largest passenger ship ever lost as a result of a shipwreck. We have already talked about the largest seven-masted schooner in history, Thomas Lawson () and about the mystical prediction of her fate.
The schooner sank on Friday the 13th, and one of the novels written by the millionaire Thomas Lawson, whose name she bore, was called Friday the Thirteenth. So, "Costa Concordia" also died on Friday and also on the 13th!
The cruise liner Costa Concordia was built at the Italian Fincantieri shipyard in Sestri Ponente (a suburb of Geno) in 2006 by order of Costa Crociere. At that time, it was the 10th largest passenger ship in the world rankings and the largest for Costa. "Costa Concordia" became the lead ship in a series of six units.
Costa Concordia had 13 decks; maximum length the vessel was 290.2 m, beam - 35.5 m, draft - 8.2 m, gross tonnage - 114,147 gross tonnage. Combined diesel-electric power point included 6 diesel generators with a total capacity of 102,780 hp. and two electric motors with a capacity of 21 MW each. Max speed was equal to 23 knots, operational - 19.6 knots.
One and a half thousand comfortable cabins of different classes (from 16.7 to 44.8 sq.m) could accommodate 3,780 passengers. All cabins were equipped with TV, telephone, air conditioning, private bathroom and toilet. In addition, there were 14 elevators, 4 swimming pools, 5 restaurants, 13 bars, a theater, a two-level fitness center, a casino, a Formula 1 simulator. The ship's own crew consisted of 1100 people.
The Costa Concordia set off on its maiden voyage on July 14, 2006 and operated for several years on cruise lines in the Western Mediterranean. On the evening of January 13, 2012, the ship left the port of Civitavecchia and headed for Savona. It was an ordinary cruise "7 nights of winter mediterranean sea". At about 21:30 in the area of the island of Giglio, when most of passengers dined in a restaurant, the liner hits a stone reef with its left side and gets an underwater hole 53 m long (from the 52nd frame to the 125th). Five compartments, from the third to the eighth, quickly fill with water, the main engines stop. "Costa Concordia" manages to pass by inertia a little more than a kilometer and turns her nose to the harbor of Giglio. Then, under the influence of the wind, she drifts and at about 10 pm she runs aground in the immediate vicinity of the coast. The vessel, designed to maintain buoyancy only when two compartments are flooded, begins to sink with a roll to starboard.
The crash of the liner seemed inexplicable. General bewilderment can be understood: "Costa Concordia" walked past the island of Giglio once a week, that is, 52 times a year, and how did she manage to run into a stone reef? Why did the liner deviate from its course by 3-4 miles?
Subsequently, the captain of the cruise ship, Francesco Schettino, admitted that he decided to bring the ship closer to the island of Giglio and greet the former captain of the Costa Concordia, who lived there, his good friend. He had already done this several times on previous flights, but on that ill-fated Friday he hesitated with the turn, and the liner ripped the board against the stones. The court recognized this version as the most likely, although Schettino later changed his testimony. In particular, he claimed that he was forced to change course by the manager of the Carnival company, but this statement was not supported by the facts.
At the time of the disaster, there were 3,216 passengers from 62 countries and 1,023 crew members on board. Among the passengers were 108 Russians, 45 citizens of Ukraine, 7 citizens of Moldova, 3 of Kazakhstan and 3 of Belarus. In addition, three of our compatriots were members of the liner's crew.
The rescue operation was badly organized. Instead of immediately starting the evacuation of passengers, the captain of the liner was silent for 15 minutes, and then announced to the passengers that the ship had only minor problems with the generator. And only almost an hour after the accident, when the ship listed 30 degrees, an emergency alarm sounded. The landing of people in the boats was accompanied by panic and stampede. Only the proximity of the coast made it possible to avoid a huge number of victims.
Captain Schettino, according to investigators, was one of the first to leave the ship without sending a distress signal. The Coast Guard found out about the crash of the liner belatedly and joined the evacuation of people only late at night. The active phase of the rescue operation continued until morning. Some passengers were transported ashore by helicopters.
Passengers who ended up on the island of Giglio were accommodated in a local church, school and other premises where there was at least a little free space. locals how could they help wrecked brought them food, blankets, warm clothes. Meanwhile, rescuers did not stop working, trying to find people inside the ship, including in the underwater part in the resulting air bags. Their efforts were not unsuccessful: on January 14-15, two newlyweds from South Korea and one Italian, a crew member of the liner, were found and rescued.
The victims of the disaster were 32 people. The search for bodies continued for a long time - the remains of the most recent missing were discovered only in November 2013. On February 1, 2014, another person was added to the mournful list - a diver died in an accident during work to raise the ship.
The Costa Concordia remained at the wreck for two years and became a tourist attraction. A stream of tourists rushed to the island of Giglio. In the nearby town of San Stefano, located on the mainland, tour operators did business selling tickets for excursions to the site of the tragedy. However, the inhabitants of the island were not pleased with the ship's hull, which became a grave. In addition, they feared that fuel and sewage would begin to flow out of the liner's tanks. Therefore, they threatened the Costa Crociere company with a lawsuit if the half-sunk ship was not removed in a timely manner.
On board the sunken liner were about six thousand works of art. The most valuable of them is a rare collection of Japanese engravings of the 18th-19th centuries, in particular, the work of Katsushika Hokusai. The Costa Concordia also had 19th-century Bohemian glass, antiques, jewelry from the ship's jewelry stores, valuables and money left by passengers in the cabins. Therefore, the forces of the Coast Guard and the Carabinieri guarded the ship from the encroachments of marauders. However, the Italian media reported back in March 2012 about the theft of a ship's bell.
Work on pumping 2300 tons of fuel, oil and sewage from tanks was completed on March 24, 2012. A month later, it was announced that the American company Titan Salvage won the tender for the lifting and evacuation of the vessel. Initially, the operation was expected to take seven to ten months. In fact, it turned out much more, since a large amount of preparatory work was required. An underwater platform was built under the bottom of the ship, special counterweight pontoons were mounted on the port side, which, after filling with water, were supposed to put the liner on even keel.
The 19-hour operation to straighten and lift the liner was carried out on September 16-17, 2013. The ship was set on an even keel with the help of 36 steel cables and counterweight pontoons. Then a platform with similar pontoons was brought to the starboard side. After draining all the pontoons, the skeleton of the Costa Concordia floated to the surface.
It is believed that the work performed has become the most expensive in the history of rescue operations. Their cost was about 250 million euros.
The Costa Concordia remained off the island of Giglio for another 10 months, and only at the end of July 2014 was it towed for disposal to the shipyard in Sestri Ponente, where the ship was built 8 years ago. It was assumed that the work on cutting the hull into metal would take 22 months and end in the spring of 2016.
The main and, in fact, the only culprit of the disaster, the court recognized the captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino. He was accused of negligence, inadvertently killing 32 people, and leaving his ship before all passengers were evacuated. However, Schettino denied many of the charges brought against him, showing miracles of resourcefulness. In particular, he argued that it was not he who was to blame for the deaths, but the unsatisfactory security system of the liner. He tried to shift the blame for the collision with the reef to the Filipino helmsman, who, allegedly due to poor knowledge of the language, carried out the commands too slowly ... He explained his flight at the very beginning of the evacuation in court as follows: “I didn’t even have a life jacket, because I gave it to one of the passengers. I tried to get the vest out of the lifeboat where they usually lie. The ship suddenly lists somewhere at 60-70 degrees. I stumbled and hit one of the lifeboats. That's why I was there."
Tests for alcohol and drugs gave a negative result, but Schettino, according to people who knew him, even when sober was distinguished by indiscipline and recklessness unusual for his age (51). One of his colleagues said: “He would even drive a bus like a Ferrari!”
On February 12, 2015, the Grosseto City Court found Schettino guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.
The total damage from the death of the Costa Concordia for the ship-owning company amounted to approximately 1.5 billion euros. And this, of course, without taking into account reputational losses.
In the photographs below, you can compare the interiors of the liner - before the disaster and after a two-year stay under water:
We all remember how, shortly after the New Year, a luxury floating hotel was wrecked off the coast of Italy. For hundreds of its passengers fun vacation turned into a nightmare, and the most modern technology was powerless in the face of the notorious human factor.
On Friday, January 13 this year at 21:15, Antonello Tievoli, who served as head waiter on the ship, entered the captain's bridge of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. Through the wide portholes, Tievoli could see the flickering lights of his small homeland, the island of Giglio, approaching the ship.
Captain Francesco Schettino knew that Tievoli's sister lived on the island, and therefore invited him to the bridge when the ship passed these shores. The 13 brightly lit decks of the Costa Concordia could outshine any light source on Guillo, and the number of people on board (4200) outnumbered the entire population of the island by four times.
The captain deviated from established by the plan course - a floating colossus 286 m long at that moment was four miles closer to the island than it should have been. Knowledgeable people later said that it was a special tradition on the Costa liners to greet retired captain Mario Palombo, who was popular with the crews, while the ship passed by his house on Guillo Island. The ship, which had slowed down while Schettino sat at dinner, now accelerated to 16 knots. At a distance less than a mile from the coast, such a speed borders on great risk.
In the illustration: A. Francesco Schettino took the ship at least 4 miles off course to greet a colleague on shore. The captain has done this before. The speed of the vessel at the same time reached 16 knots - this is too much for maneuvers near the coast. B. The port side of the ship clings to a rock 300 meters from the coast of Guillot Island. This happened at a speed of 15 knots, and as a result, the side of the ship was torn to a length of 48 m. C. Water floods the ship, and the main power plant fails. The captain uses the reserve power to turn on the bow thrusters and throw the Costa Concordia aground. Because of the shallow draft, the ship gets a big roll. D. Nearly 45 minutes after hitting the rock, the bridge officer yells, "Captain, passengers are climbing into the lifeboats without permission!" Soon after, Schettino gives the command to begin the evacuation. The list of Costa Concordia is so great that some of the lifeboats were not available. Launching the rest also turns into a very difficult task. “Our boat hung for a long time and pounded against the side of the liner,” says passenger Nancy Lofaro. “People in the boat kept screaming.” Nancy took the photo below of the lifeboat using her cell phone. Out in shallow water, the ship lay on board. Last Passenger left Costa Concordia at about 3 am.
In the printout of the route, one could read that the ship would pass near the island, but few of the 3,200 passengers looked at the sea at that time. Just two hours earlier, the Costa Concordia had left the port of Civitavecchia, sea gate Rome, and passengers have just begun to get used to the new resort environment. Rhonda Rosenthal, a Minnesota resident, entered her cabin before leaving for the 9:30 p.m. performance of the magician Martin the Magician. She looked out the porthole and noticed white lambs on the sea. “The waves were rising quite high, and a little further you could see some kind of lights,” recalls Rozentol. “Then it seemed to me that either we were going too fast, or the shore was very close.”
Captain Schettino contacted Palombo and learned that his friend and teacher in this moment stays on the mainland in his winter quarters. But there was no way back - the ship raced straight to the rocky shore.
On this day, passengers of the Costa Concordia boarded for a pleasure trip along the west coast Italy. Entertainment turned into a tragedy when the ship caught on a rock (its fragment remained inside the hole).
21:40 yaw
Modern cruise ships are equipped with GPS-based navigation systems that constantly track the position of the liner and display data on the screen. If the system detects any deviation from the set route, it triggers an alarm. “It is possible that Schettino turned off the emergency alarms for a while in order to perform an unplanned maneuver,” says Ted Thompson, former captain United States Coast Guard, and now Senior Vice President for Technical and Legal Affairs at the International Cruise Lines Association. “By disabling the automation, he could steer the ship manually, relying on his own eyes.”
There was also other equipment on the bridge that was supposed to warn the crew, if, of course, he paid attention to these signals. “All boats are equipped with echo sounders that tell you how much water is left under the keel,” says George Borlas, a ship engineer and maritime expert, “but at the end of the day, the human factor is often stronger than technology.”
Schettino says that the ship, according to his ideas, was more than half a mile from the coast. This, of course, is too close, if you check the instructions, but it was too early to talk about the danger. Then satellite navigation data showed that less than 300 m were left to the coast.
At 21:45, everyone on the ship already knew that some kind of trouble had happened: the ship shook, and the passengers heard a loud grinding sound. Then some compared the experience with a light earthquake.
Rosenthol was watching the illusionist's performance when she felt that "the ship was rocking and seemed to be backing up." She thought it was a scripted special effect until she saw that the stage was empty. “I looked around to see where the magician could have gone, but he just disappeared.” At this moment, the ship collided with a large rock of the Le Scole reef near Guillot Island.
TTX of the ship. Length - 286 m // Height - 53 m // Number of berths for passengers - 3780 // Crew - 1100 people // Engines - 42 MW diesel-electric power plant // Propellers - paired with constant pitch // Captain - Francesco Schettino . "The ship was doomed due to a complete and utter lack of leadership at every stage of the situation" - Capt. Harry Bolton, director of maritime and leadership training programs at the California Maritime Academy.
A few seconds later, the lights flickered and went out. Rosenthol and her sister (the sister is a US Army officer serving in Afghanistan and on vacation on a cruise) went to their cabin to sleep. Everyone was informed by loudspeakers that there were technical problems with the generators, and they promised to quickly restore power supply.
The impact on the rock led to the fact that a 48 m long hole was formed along the port side. Outboard water rushed into the ship through a hole the size of an Olympic pool, filling three of the seven compartments separated from each other by watertight bulkheads. The generators are up to snuff. Costa Concordia is in serious trouble.
In the photo - the captain of the "Concordia" Francesco Schettino
Ships built after 2010 would not capsize if three compartments were flooded, as happened with Costa Concordia. In 2008 at the International maritime organization At the UN, new construction standards have been developed requiring that the ship maintain stability when more than two compartments are flooded. Costa Concordia, commissioned in 2005, met only outdated safety standards from 50 years ago.
A few minutes after the impact, a flickering emergency light came on. The ship, which was gradually drifting away from the island, began to list to port. However, crew members continued to tell passengers that the situation was under control.
21:49 A ship without a helmsman
More than ten years ago, new rules were introduced in both cargo and passenger shipping, aimed at more efficient crew actions in an emergency. The essence of the innovations is in the preliminary planning of all necessary actions, so that in an emergency situation they are carried out faster and more organized. Such regulations were based on a well-thought-out hierarchy of subordination, which distributes responsibility in a crisis situation.
How will the rescuers put on an even keel a ship with a displacement of 114,500 tons that has been laid on board? If the owners want to receive it safe and sound, then the ship must first be patched up, and then freed from water and fuel. “Now, when a new vessel is put into operation, all drawings are attached to it in in electronic format, as well as all stability calculations,” says Tim Beaver, president of the American Wreck Recovery Association. “With such documentation, we can simulate the lifting of the ship on a computer.” Then, hydraulic winches placed on the shore and on the floating cranes, pulling the chains (blue and orange lines), straighten the vessel's roll. This loosens the tethers (shown in yellow) to prevent the boat from rocking too hard in the opposite direction.
This idea did not stand the test in the darkness of Friday the 13th. Based on the available reports and video footage taken on the bridge immediately after the collision, it would seem that the captain did not manage anyone's activities and did not feel like a commander at all.
“The ship was doomed due to a complete lack of leadership at every stage of the situation,” says Capt. Harry Bolton, director of maritime and leadership development programs at the California Maritime Academy.
Ninety miles north, the night watch at the Italian Coast Guard post in Livorno received its first warning from the police. The police began to receive alarm calls from citizens whose relatives were on board the ship at that time. The meaning of the calls was reduced to the fact that there were some difficulties on the ship located nearby. Captain of the Italian Coast Guard Gregorio De Falco called the Costa Concordia navigation bridge, where he was told that "everything is in order, there are just technical problems." Not a word was said about the giant hole in the port side.
Taking more and more sea water into the holds, the Costa Concordia began to take on a dangerous list. Plates and cutlery fell from tables, serving tables and other furniture slid down the deck against the walls. Passengers in pajamas and life jackets began to leave the cabins. There was a hustle and bustle and confusion. As it turned out, the tourists did not know where the lifeboats to which they were assigned were located. Such information is usually provided at the very first exercise, which is supposed to be held no later than 24 hours after departure for the cruise. However, the very first hours of sailing were going on, and 696 passengers simply did not know where to go.
Crew members, finding themselves without guidance and necessary information asked passengers to remain seated. “In this situation, the crew was as ignorant as the passengers,” says John Conrad, captain of a merchant ship and founder of maritime practice site gCapitan.
22:15 disaster
With the main diesels stalled, the Costa Concordia drifted for about an hour. GPS data shows that the speed of the liner has dropped to almost zero. “When a ship has no forward speed, it is impossible to steer it,” Harry Bolton explains. True, Schettino still had additional features. “The ship has auxiliary engines that provide some reserve power. They are usually located on upper decks to protect against possible flooding,” says Bolton.
Approximately 30 minutes after impact, the captain appears to have attempted to use this backup engine to power the bow thrusters. Usually they are used when mooring, but Schettino, most likely, decided to use the last opportunity to bring the ship to the shore. It may very well be that this particular maneuver helped save human lives, but it also led to unforeseen consequences. “The captain sought to bring the Costa Concordia to shallow water, hoping that by throwing the ship aground, he would put it on an even keel,” says Bolton, “but Schettino was wrong in his calculations.”
When settling into your cabin, the first thing to do is find out where you have your life jacket. Try putting it on and taking it off. Find out where else life jackets are stored on the ship. In case the lights go out, stock up on a couple of flashlights. Find out for yourself where the boat hangs, to which you are personally assigned.
Nancy and Mario Lofaro of New Rochelle, New York, frightened at the sight of the tilted deck, ran to their cabin to grab clothes and survival gear. As they ran down the corridors, the ship tilted even more. “We heard a loud noise,” says Nancy, “and everything around started falling to the floor and breaking.” At this point, the Costa Concordia ran into a coastal shallow and was now ready to capsize.
22:58 Delay is like death
The captain gave the official order to abandon ship. According to the charter, no more than 30 minutes should pass from this order to the launching of all 26 lifeboats. However, the team for some reason hesitated, and the rescue work went awry. By this time, the Costa Concordia was listing more than 20 degrees, so that some of the boats hanging on the sides were no longer usable.
Rosenthol and her sister were in one of the boats that were first launched. They landed at the pier of Guillot Island at 23:14. There, a volunteer rescuer immediately rushed to them with a request to hand over their vests. It was reported from the liner that about 500 passengers were taken by surprise by the disaster, and they could not pick up life jackets from their cabins.
At about 11:30 p.m., Schettino stepped into a lifeboat (as he himself says, "fell into the boat"), and he was taken to the shore. Behind him he left his ship and hundreds of passengers. There are reports that other officers from the Concordia crew followed suit, although there were those who were involved in the delivery of passengers to shore.
Rescue operations begin, as a rule, with the fact that the affected ship is released from all fuel supplies. The point is not only that this fuel is an environmental threat, but also that its weight will interfere with the lifting of the vessel.
Nancy Lofaro remembers how scary it was to wait in a lifeboat while the sailors hesitated to launch it. "Because of limit roll launching boats into the water was almost impossible. The boat was banging against the side of the liner all the time,” she says. “The people inside were screaming continuously.”
Schettino stranded the Costa Concordia in a place where the depth was approximately 13 m. When the ship finally fell aboard, dozens of people jumped or fell into the water. Some of them were in evening clothes. The water temperature was about 14 °C. In such water, the limbs lose their mobility in a matter of minutes, and death from hypothermia occurs in less than an hour.
00:42 Drama epilogue
By this time, Italian coast guard helicopters had located the crash site using the coordinates transmitted by the ship's navigation system. Those caught in the water were searched from the air using infrared cameras. More than 100 people were still held on the decks above the water level - they were dropped by helicopter pilots with special belts so that they could fasten to something.
Coast Guard officer De Falco reached Schettino on his cell phone. The border guard demanded that the captain return to his duties, but was refused in the most categorical form. “You may have saved your own skin, but you will pay for everything with me,” De Falco shouted over the phone.
List of victims the wreck of the Costa Concordia reached 32 people (including two missing). Schettino is charged with manslaughter, and his first mate, several crew members and some Costa officials were also under investigation.
Analyzing the actions of the crew of Costa Concordia, it is difficult to immediately formulate recommendations that would make it possible to avoid this in the future. True, one lesson has already been learned: the teachings of lifeboats on pleasure liners are held before, and not after, sailing on a cruise.
The death of the Titanic, no matter how much they talk about human errors that led to a catastrophe, was primarily a warning against unconditional faith in technology. The case of the Costa Concordia embodies a different moral: do not trust those responsible persons who believe that your security does not require any effort from them.
