Rescue teams worked at the Costa Concordia cruise ship off Italy's coast on Tuesday. At least 11 are known to have died, after five more bodies were recovered. More Photos »
By GAIA PIANIGIANI and
Published: January 17, 2012
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GIGLIO, Italy — Rescuers pulled five bodies clad in sodden life vests from the partly sunken cruise liner Costa Concordia on Tuesday, bringing the death toll in the disaster to at least 11, as the Italian news media published transcripts of a tense screaming match between the coast guard and the captain, who fled to a lifeboat after he smashed the ship on a reef.
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GraphicWhere the Cruise Ship Crashed
PhotographsCruise Ship Runs Aground in Italy
Related
Ship Salvage Workers Roll Up Their Sleeves (January 18, 2012)
Industry Weighs Effect of Ship Accident (January 18, 2012)
The Lede Blog: Confusion and Then Anger Heard in Audio Recordings of Calls to Cruise Ship Captain (January 17, 2012)
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Max Rossi/Reuters
Divers retrieved a body on Tuesday at the ship, where holes were blasted in the hull to aid access. More Photos »
Reuters TV
Capt. Francesco Schettino, who fled his damaged ship off Italy, in custody on Tuesday. More Photos »
Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press
Oil removal ships worked Monday night off the coast of Tuscany to keep the Costa Concordia from leaking fuel into a marine wildlife sanctuary. More Photos »
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"Imagine a world with no regulations? Imagine a 21st century Titanic."Debra, formerly from NYC
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Publication of the transcripts added a dramatic new dimension to the accounts of the accident on Friday night, when Capt. Francesco Schettino, 52, apparently tried to show off the gleaming $450 million vessel to residents of this island off the coast of Tuscany, and in the process ripped a hole in its hull. The ship quickly began to list heavily to starboard as panicked passengers and crew members made pell-mell escapes, evoking images of the Titanic’s final moments.
“Go up on the bow of the ship on a rope ladder, and tell me what you can do, how many people are there and what they need — now!” Gregorio Maria De Falco, a coast guard officer, told Captain Schettino by telephone as the captain bobbed Friday night in a lifeboat, as revealed in audio recordings published by Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian newspaper. “All right, I’m going,” Captain Schettino is heard to reply.
The recordings and transcripts suggested that the coast guard officer was stupefied that Captain Schettino had vacated the ship before accounting for all 4,200 passengers and crew members on board. They also indicate that the captain did not know that people had died, and had asked the coast guard officer for an accounting. “You are the one who has to tell me how many there are! Christ!” the officer screams at the captain in response.
Prosecutors and the cruise line that owns the ship have blamed Captain Schettino for the wreck, saying he deviated from the course plotted in advance. Captain Schettino has said that he hit an uncharted rock.
Late Tuesday a judge decided to free Captain Schettino from police custody but ordered him placed under house arrest at his home in Sorrento, about 250 miles south of the shipwreck site. Criminal charges including manslaughter and abandoning ship are expected to be filed by prosecutors in coming days.
News, photos and video from the shipwreck have sent shudders through the cruise industry at the most important time of the year for vacation bookings. In a sign of growing concern, Micky Arison, chief executive of the Costa Concordia’s parent company, Carnival Corporation of Miami, the largest cruise line operator, issued a statement on Tuesday expressing grief at word of the newly discovered bodies. Mr. Arison also disclosed that Carnival had sent senior technical experts to Giglio to offer “additional support for this tragic and highly unusual incident.”
The recovery of the five bodies came after rescue crews blasted holes into the stricken vessel’s hull to open new access routes.
Filippo Marini, a coast guard spokesman, said the five — a woman and four men apparently 50 to 60 years old — were all in the stern of the vessel as it lay canted at a crazy angle, its funnel, or smokestack, almost parallel to the water in which the ship foundered. Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that all five bodies had been below the waterline.
Their nationalities were not immediately known.
Italian officials said before they were found that at least 24 people from the ship were still unaccounted for, including two Americans, Gerald and Barbara Heil, a retired Minnesota couple married for 43 years.
The mounting tally of the dead, growing concern over the fates of those still missing and worries about a potential environmental disaster from the half-million gallons of fuel still aboard the vessel cranked up pressure on judicial authorities to take action against those deemed responsible for the crash, which happened almost within easy swimming range of this island’s shore.
Just after dawn on Tuesday, reporters heard the sounds of four controlled explosions as divers resumed rescue operations, which were suspended on Monday after the fuel-laden liner shifted on its rocky resting place and sank slightly in the water.
Sgt. Antonino Ruggero, an Italian Navy diver, told reporters that the explosions had created holes around four feet wide, which were meant to accelerate recovery efforts and “create passages in the points where, based on our own evaluations, it looked like it was easier to find people, and from where it is easier for rescuers to get in, and possibly leave the ship in a rush if it moves again.”
Luca Cari, a spokesman for the firefighters who are leading the operation, said there was still a “glimmer of hope” that survivors might be found, while Mr. Marini, the Italian coast guard spokesman, said rescuers were hoping that some of those listed as missing had simply left the ship without notifying the authorities.
Smit Salvage, a Dutch company hired by the ship’s owner to remove the fuel, said Tuesday that the search for the missing people was the first priority and that a survey of the ship must take place before the fuel extraction could begin.
In White Bear Lake, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb where the Heils raised four children, members of their parish at the Church of St. Pius X expressed anguish that they had not been located, holding out hope that rescuers would find them alive and planning a prayer service for Wednesday. Parishioners said the couple, who had long been active in the church, had put off such a vacation for decades while paying for their children to attend St. Pius X School.
“It’s devastating,” said Dennis Bechel, 71, a friend. “I didn’t pay any attention to the trip, and now it becomes, like, ‘Oh my God!’ It’s like having your own family there.”
Larry Erickson, director of operations at St. Pius X, tried to be optimistic. “Whatever happens, they’re together,” he said. “They were doing something they loved.”
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