According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the reason the captain [of the Costa Concordia] decided to cruise by the island [where it foundered and capsized], a considerable deviation from the regular route, was to allow his chief steward, who is from Giglio, to see the island in a different view, from the ship.
The La Repubblica also reported that Antonello Tievolli, the sister of the chief steward, wrote on her Facebook page shortly before the ship hit rocks that: "In a short period of time the Concordia ship will pass very close. A big greeting to my brother who will finally get to have a holiday on landing in Savona."
Digital Journal
So far, eleven dead.Prosecutors have accused Captain Francesco Schettino, who is in an Italian jail, of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship before all passengers were evacuated on Friday night.
Schettino has said he stayed aboard until the ship was evacuated. However, a recording of his conversation with Italian Coast Guard Captain Gregorio De Falco indicates he fled before all passengers were off and then resisted De Falco's repeated orders to return.
"You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear?'' De Falco said in the audio tape.
Schettino resisted, saying the ship was tipping and that it was dark. At the time, he was in a lifeboat and said he was co-ordinating the rescue from there.
De Falco shouted back: "And so what? You want go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!''
"You go aboard. It is an order. Don't make any more excuses. You have declared the abandoning of the ship, now I am in charge,'' De Falco shouted.
[...]
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Royal Boskalis Westminster, the Dutch company handling the operation to remove the fuel from the vessel, said the process would take at least three weeks.
When pumping out diesel oil, Peter Berdowski told Dutch television, "every hour counts because if something happens and that spills and there is damage, then you have a very big ecological catastrophe".
The ship, one of the biggest passenger vessels ever to be wrecked, foundered after striking a rock just as dinner was being served on Friday night. It quickly rolled on its side, revealing a long gouge below the waterline.
alJazeera
Commerce above all else.Isola del Giglio, where the stricken cruise ship rests, is part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, the largest marine protected area in Italy.
Among its inhabitants are important plants and birds and some rare frogs, while the seas support coral, cetaceans and the occasional Mediterranean monk seal - a critically endangered species.
[...]
As Italy's Environment Minister Corrado Clini put it, referring to the passenger boats that ferry people around the Venetian lagoon: "That's enough, we have to stop treating these ships like they were simple vaporetti [small ferries]."
But cargo ships and cruise liners have commercial imperatives to go where they go.
BBC
Yeah, don't feel bad about the honeymoon tragedy. That marriage was doomed anyway.The name of another missing person has also been revealed - 30-year-old honeymooner Maria D'Introno, of Biella near Turin, who had been on the ship with husband Vincenzo Rosselli and other family members to celebrate their marriage.
All apart from Maria reached the safety of the shore by jumping into the water and swimming to a nearby headland while wearing life jackets.
Vincenzo said: 'The main thing on my mind as we were swimming towards the shore was for my 74-year-old father who has a problem with his hip. We all had life jackets but Maria couldn't swim and she was scared of the water.'
Daily Mail
UPDATE: 1/19
No comments:
Post a Comment