In a bizarre mishap at sea that instills thoughts of both the Titanic and Andrea Doria sinkings, the Costa Liane's Concordia hit rocks off the Italian coast, immediately takes on a list that renders half of her lifeboats useless and ultimately capsizes as shown above. Reports of passengers paint a picture of chaotic mishandling of the evacuation of the vessel. In addition, the rapid heeling over of the vessel raises questions about the ship's design (a design defect doomed the Andrea Doria in 1956) and that of its sister ships. Costa is owned by Carnival Cruises which also owns P & O Lines and the famed Cunard Line. Having cruised through these very same waters on the cruise the Boyfriend and I took last October certainly makes the sinking take on a closer meaning. To me, it is baffling that now evacuation drill had been held. On the Liberty of the Seas, we had a drill the first day after boarding the ship and before leaving port. Here are highlights from the BBC:
Three are known to have died and a morning NBC News TV story indicated at least another 14 are missing.
The Costa Concordia had sailed earlier on Friday from Civitavecchia port near Rome for a Mediterranean cruise, due to dock in Marseille after calling at ports in Sicily, Sardinia and Spain. One thousand passengers were Italian, with 500 Germans and 160 French.
Some passengers told the Associated Press the crew had failed to give instructions on how to evacuate the ship. An evacuation drill was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. "It was so unorganised, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 17:00 (16:00 GMT)," Melissa Goduti, 28, from the US told AP. "We had joked what if something had happened today."
The 290-metre (950 ft) vessel ran aground, starting taking in water and listing by 20 degrees, the local coast guard said. Orders were given to abandon ship, Deodato Ordona, a cabin steward on the Costa Concordia, told the BBC. "We announced a general emergency and took passengers to muster stations," he said. "But it is hard to launch the lifeboats, so they moved to the right side of the ship, and they could launch."
Coast guard official Francesco Paolillo, a local coast guard official, told the AFP news agency there was a 30m hole in the ship but that it was too early to say what exactly had happened. "We think this happened as a result of sailing too close to an obstacle like a reef," he said. Costa Cruises, the company which owns the ship, said it could not yet say what had caused the accident.
Three are known to have died and a morning NBC News TV story indicated at least another 14 are missing.
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