Coasta Concordia Runs Aground

 

Still 15 recorded passengers are missing from the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast of Giglio island on January 13, 2012. The evacuation of the ship took several hours, after hundreds of passengers that had boarded the ship that morning had not yet been told what to do in case of an emergency. Although there were enough lifeboats aboard ship, some people were forced to stay back. The ones that are still said to be missing were probably thrusted to the hull, or part of the ship submerged underwater. There have been numerous claims of the ship’s captain,  Francesco Schettino, pre-maturely abandoning the ship to run and catch a lifeboat. Coast guard crews ordered Schettino to go back aboard ship to help with the evacuation of passengers. He never went back aboard and claimed he fell into the lifeboat.
Captain Schettino, who was jailed after leaving the ship, is under house arrest near Naples. He is currently facing charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship before all passengers had left. Each passenger of the Costa Concordia Cruise trip will be payed $14,500 by Genoa – based Costa Crociere and a full reimburse expense including the coat of the cruise. It may take up to 10 months for the whole ship to be removed from the reef, while 500,000 gallons of fuel are being pumped out of the cruise ship. Dive teams and removal forces have been delayed because of the weird weather this winter. Over time, the ship has shifted over 24 inches and is dangerously close to a 290 ft. sea floor. Passengers and crew members that survived the accident have been called to testify at a hearing on March 3, in Grosseto. I personally am not really scared about traveling by cruise. I just believe that if the captain knew more of what he was doing, the whole situation could have been avoided.

~Gabriella Amodei

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