Costa Concordia Cruise: What Happened in 2012?

Overview:

13th January 2012, 7:15 PM. The world’s largest Italian cruise ship set sail for its 7-day European tour. This ship was named the Costa Concordia Cruise. It was so big that it was bigger than the Titanic and could seat an additional 2,000 passengers. That’s why 4,252 people are on board. If we talk about entertainment, this ship had everything! 4 big swimming pools, 5 restaurants, 13 different bars, a casino, a basketball court, a huge fitness center that had a gym, a sauna, a Turkish bath, and even an F1 racing simulator was installed on this Costa Concordia cruise ship. The first destination of this ship was Savona, a city in Italy, and it was supposed to take about a day to reach there. But only 2.5 hours after the ship departed, everyone heard a sudden piercing noise.

After that, all the lights on the ship went off. And the ship started tilting towards one side. The time was 9:45 PM. A time when some people were sleeping in their rooms, and some were eating at the dinner tables. Some people who were sleeping woke up, and they came out of their cabins to see what was happening. Meanwhile, the plates of the people sitting at the dinner table started sliding down the side of the table. Passengers were told via intercom that the ship had an electrical failure. But the fact was that the engine of the ship had failed. The captain of the ship was hiding this fact from the people. After a while, the ship started tilting to the other side.

By then, the passengers realized this was not an ordinary electrical failure. People were worried that this was another incident similar to Titanic’s. Coincidentally, the Titanic accident happened exactly 100 years ago, in 1912. And now, when this ship had an electrical failure, the famous Titanic theme song, My Heart Will Go On, was playing in the ship’s dining hall. Slowly, the Costa Concordia Cruise ship started tilting more; it tilted to the right side, and the lower rooms filled with water.

By then, people had realized that the ship was going to sink. But why were the passengers not being informed properly? Why was the ship’s captain so quiet? This ship was operated by an Italian company called Costa Crociere. Initially, this company operated only cargo ships. But in 1948, they launched their Costa lines. Soon after, it became one of Europe’s biggest cruise ship companies. Later, in 2000, a company named Carnival Corporation bought it. So, Costa Croisiere became a subsidiary company of Carnival. In June 2006, they launched their first ship of the Concordia class.

The Costa Concordia:

The Costa Concordia Cruise that we’re talking about today. The biggest Italian cruise ship of its time. The cost of making it was $570 million. ₹25 billion at that time. That day, the captain of this ship was Francesco Schettino, an Italian man who had been working for this company since 2002. Remember his name because he plays an important role in our story. At 7:18 PM, this ship left for its first destination, Savona. And only two hours had passed when this ship deviated from its normal route. It was not a mistake.

Captain Schettino wanted to take the ship to a particular island. The Giglio Island in Italy. He wanted the island’s people to see the glittering ship in the dark of night. A ship passing near the land is called a sail past or sail by. Normally, such big ships sail at a distance of 7-8 km from the shore well into the sea because the water needs to be deep enough for such a big ship to sail. But because of this sail-by, this ship was only 150 m away from the shore. Obviously, the water was not very deep. Big rocks or reefs can be under the ship at this close distance, which can hit the ship.

On top of that, it was nighttime, and the ship was sailing quite fast. Later, the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport report confirmed this. The ship was sailing at an unsafe distance, very close to the shore at night. One question that will arise here is, why was the captain doing this? The thing is, Captain Schettino used to work under Senior Captain Mario Palombo. And Mario was living on the Giglio Island.

The night this ship was passing by this island, Captain Schettino called Mario and told him that since they would be passing by the island, they would sound a siren for him, as they wanted to give him a tribute. To this, Mario said that he was not on the island. Instead, he was in another Italian city. During this conversation, the call line gets disconnected. This call was made at 9:40 PM. A few minutes later, the scary sound I mentioned at the beginning of the article came. The thing everyone feared happened. This ship collided with the rocks in the water. This collision tore the hull of the Concordia ship. A 70-meter-long wound injured the ship’s sensitive part. The place where this impact happened was not even 100 meters away from the island.

Situation Getting Worse:

In the darkness of the night, this ship had reached so close to the island. Water started flowing into the ship rapidly. 26-year-old Andrea Corollo, the third officer of the Concordia ship, was sleeping in his cabin when this incident happened. When he woke up and exited his cabin, he saw that the water had already reached the hallway. He immediately ran to the engine room. When he reached there, he saw that the door could not be opened. He saw the generators and engines completely submerged in water through the closed door. At 9:52 PM, the chief engineer and the other engine room officers tried to start the emergency diesel generator. Unfortunately, they failed in this attempt.

Captain Schettino’s Actions:

The chief engineer went to inform Captain Schettino about how bad the situation was. But the ship’s captain told the passengers there was nothing to worry about. That it was a simple blackout. Over the next few minutes, the ship was not standing still, rather, it was moving forward, away from the island. At around 10 PM, Captain Schettino felt the ship should be turned around. He reasoned it would be more dangerous to be in the middle of the sea if they sank. It would be better to stay near the island. The ship took a U-turn; thus, instead of upright, it started tilting to the other side.

First, it tilted to the left, now it has started tilting to the right. The ship’s crisis coordinator, Roberto Ferrarini, called Captain Schettino twice, at 10:05 PM and 10:07 PM. In the second call, Captain Schettino finally acknowledged that the ship had some problems. But had he admitted these problems sooner, it would have been better. Turning away from the truth can be very dangerous, as you will see later in the story. And this applies to our lives, too.

Captain Accepted his Mistake:

Captain Schettino did admit his mistake but follows it with another act of stupidity. He tried to cover up his mistakes. He claimed that the blackout caused the accident. He reverses the timeline. In reality, the accident caused the blackout. Meanwhile, some distressed passengers tried to call the local police. At 10:12 PM, the Italian coast guard called the ship’s captain. They asked him what was happening on the ship and informed him that passengers of the ship were contacting them. On the other hand, the captain said that nothing devastating had happened. They simply had a blackout. He told them not to worry. When this was said, half an hour had passed since the collision.

Captain’s Abandonment and Coast Guard Intervention:

Ten more minutes passed, and Captain Schettino finally changed his stance. After all, how long could he suppress the truth with lies? At 10:22 PM, Schettino told the radio operator to call and inform the Coast Guard that there had been a collision on the ship’s left side and that Concordia needed the help of tugboats. Life jackets were handed out to the passengers, and everyone was safe. Each minute was important here because the ship was gradually tilting more and more.

Captain Schettino’s Controversial Actions:

Finally, at 10:33 AM, a general emergency alarm was raised, and the passengers were told to gather in the emergency assembly areas and wait for further instructions. At 10:48 PM, the ship was tilted 30°. More than an hour had passed since the accident. At 10.54 PM, finally, Captain Schettino gave orders to abandon the ship. More than 4,200 people were stuck on this ship. And this ship was tilted by 30°. Many of the lower cabins were submerged in the water, and things were strewn about in the upper decks, but nothing was in its place.

In this situation, the captain had made only one reasonable decision, “To take a U-turn.” Now, based on this one good decision, the lying, egoistic Captain was trying to garner support and wanted people to see him as a hero because of this decision. Undoubtedly, this decision was needed. But the rest of his decisions were unreasonable and entirely wrong decisions. On top of that, he was piling up his lies and misguiding passengers on this sinking ship. Later, our captain did something, after which the people thoroughly criticized him. As soon as he gave the order to abandon the ship, Concordia had a huge commotion.

Some people had already fled using lifeboats before this announcement. Some others were confident that they could swim, so they jumped into the water. They swam to the island nearby. But after the signal from the captain, chaos ensued. The mob of passengers ran towards the lifeboats. People pushed and shoved one another to get to the lifeboats. One good thing was that some crew members were already rebelling against the captain, fed up with Captain Schettino’s behavior. Ten to fifteen minutes before his order, the passengers were taken out of their cabins and put into the lifeboats.

“A steward approached us because the key card wasn’t working. And told us, “Take your coat, and take your life jacket.”

In the darkness of the night, the ship was slowly falling to the right. A 40° tilt, a 50° tilt. By this point, the passengers whose cabins were on the right side had reached the sea’s surface level. So they could easily jump into the water and head towards the island. But the problem was for those who were on the other side of the ship. In a tilted ship, how could they find the way out?

In the midst of all this, an Indian staff member was also present. Karnaatha Rameshana is the only woman among the 11-member security staff of Concordia. She later stated how language barriers started to emerge. Most of the passengers on the Costa Concordia cruise ship were Italian, but many of the crew members did not know Italian. On top of that, another problem was that most of the crew members were not trained for such emergency situations. They were just service staff.

Rescue and Aftermath:

Despite all these problems, some crew members were truly heroes. Karnaatha personally seated a blind woman on a lifeboat. Two other members lifted wheelchair-bound passengers on their shoulders and seated them on the lifeboats. That night, another Indian crew member was present on the ship. Russell Rebello he was working as a waiter. Before Captain Schettino’s order, he was helping the passengers to get on the lifeboats. He kept helping passengers on the sinking ship till the last moment, but unfortunately, Russel was among those who couldn’t save themselves during this evacuation. We don’t know what happened to him exactly, but he drowned while helping the passengers.

“Indian waiter Russel Rebello is said to have died after giving up his own life-jacket to save one passenger and helping others into lifeboats.”

Island Residents’ Support:

On the other hand, there were people like Captain Schettino who, instead of helping the passengers, abandoned the ship at the earliest and went towards the island. “Italian cruise ship captain apparently ran for lifeboat and got off the wreck, while his crew and passengers were still on board fighting for their lives.” Yup, you heard that right. The same captain who tried to cover it up with lies Wasted an hour before telling the truth to the passengers, and as soon as he made the announcement, within some minutes, at 11:19 PM, he was among the first crew members to abandon the ship.

Giglio Island is like a small village. Not many people live there. This island has a population of only 700 people. But that night, when the incident happened, some people came out of their homes to see what was happening. As soon as the deputy mayor of this island, Mario Pellegrini, learned that a ship was sinking, he went to the ship to help the people despite being a civilian. Without thinking for a minute, he jumped into the lifeboat and went into the sea to help the people. He said that when the ship had completely fallen to the right side, water wells were being formed inside the ship, and people were trapped in these. He arranged for a rope and used the rope to rescue the people trapped in the well. Around 2,500 to 3,300 people had safely reached the island in this early evacuation stage.

At 11:38 PM, around 400 people were still trapped in the ship. The Italian Coast Guard helicopters and fire and rescue services boats had also arrived to help people. They saved a few hundred people from underwater, but they didn’t know how many more people were still trapped in the ship. At 12:42 AM, the Coast Guard commander, Captain Gregorio De Falco, called Captain Schettino.

In his anger, he told Schettino directly that he should go back on the ship as the captain. He ordered Schettino to go back and find out about the passengers still on board. He told Schettino that he shouldn’t have left his passengers and run away. Schettino started making excuses and saying that he couldn’t go back. Despite all of this, Captain Schettino did not go back. This is why people started calling him Captain Coward later. On the one hand, some brave crew members and the Italian Coast Guard team kept helping people all night. Schettino sat at a safe distance and watched it play out. When the sun rose the next morning and the ship could be seen properly, people realized the magnitude of the incident.

Most of the people had been rescued by morning. Three people had been confirmed dead, but some people were still trapped in the ship. Meanwhile, the residents of Giglio had found out about this incident, and many locals went to help. Around 700 people were living on the island, but there were 4,000 on the ship. The residents opened their homes to provide shelter to the passengers. Elizabeth Nani, who worked in Giglio Tourist Information, reported that all the survivors were shocked. Some people were suffering from hypothermia because the water was very cold. But everyone was desperate and was trying to locate their family members and friends. Schools, churches, and canteens on this island were opened so that the survivors could get a roof over their heads. They were also given blankets and dry clothes.

But on the other hand, the rescue operation was still going on. It would last for the next 2-2.5 weeks. Everyone had to join the Italian Navy, Coast Guard, and Fire and Rescue Service. Rescue divers were also needed because the people who were still trapped were not able to open the cabin doors. The water pressure on the other side was so high that they remained trapped inside the cabin. On 14th January, a South Korean couple who were trapped inside their cabin like this was rescued. Most of the people who were killed in this incident died because of this. Trapped inside their cabin, they drowned.

Their lives could also have been saved if they had been informed on time. A total of 32 people died in this accident. The next problem was removing fuel from the sunken Costa Concordia Cruise ship and rescuing the ship so it would not remain lying there. When the engineers analyzed the ship, it was declared a constructive total loss. This meant that there was no chance of saving it. This ship could not be used again. The only option was to disassemble it and sell its scrap metal.

Fuel Removal Challenges:

First of all, the Costa Concordia Cruise ship contained around 1.9 million liters of fuel. It was a fully loaded ship. It had just started sailing. That’s why the fuel tank was full. An oil barrier was built around the ship to extract fuel. On 12 February 2012, the oil removal process began. Since it was wintertime, another problem was that much fuel was in a semi-solid state. So, it was necessary to reheat it before extracting it. After heating it, another tanker ship was used, and all the oil was transferred from one vessel to the other with a pump. This process lasted more than a month. This process continued till 24th March.

Now, the next thing was to set the ship upright; relocating it was an engineering project. A steel structure was built in the water to raise the ship again. Work on this started a year later, in April 2013. After this, huge boxes were placed on the upper side of the ship. Water was filled in these boxes to make them heavier. Ropes and cables were then used to pull these boxes as weights. These watertight boxes are called caissons. 15 such caissons were installed in total. On 16th September 2013, the actual process of straightening the Concordia began. It took 19 hours to do this. This was done by using pulling machines, steel structures, and caissons.

Engineering Efforts to Upright the Ship:

The next step was to make the Costa Concordia Cruise ship float on water. For this, more boxes were used. Caissons were installed on the other side as well, and after that, water was drained out from the caissons, which caused them to float. And as the caissons started floating, the entire ship started floating with them. “A sound usually used to warn, bled out to shout success.” 500 divers, technicians, engineers, and biologists were involved in this process. 19 months had passed since the accident, and the cost of rescuing this ship alone was $799 million.

To take this ship to the port, another ship was used to tow it. This was done in July 2014. By then, the total cost of this operation had reached $1.2 billion. But the company still had more such expenses to bear. It took a lot of effort and money to scrap metal from this broken ship.

More than 350 people worked on this, and this process ended in July 2017. But after rescuing people, a steady stream of legal cases had begun. Finally, this company returned the price of each surviving passenger’s ticket and paid an additional €11,000 as compensation. This is around ₹1 million per passenger. Apart from this, the families of the deceased passengers were paid an undisclosed amount. The total cost of this Costa Concordia Cruise disaster for this company was $2 billion.

Captain’s Trial and Sentencing:

But you must be wondering, what happened to the ship’s captain? The guy who was the sole reason behind this incident lied to his passengers and didn’t give them timely information, and when the ship started sinking, he abandoned the ship first and ran away. Even after the incident, Captain Schettino’s habit of lying didn’t go away. When the case was being tried in court, he told the court that when the ship was at an angle of 60°-70°, his foot slipped, and he fell into a lifeboat. And he, apparently, fell in a peculiar way that he was shipped off.

Obviously, no one found this argument believable. The judge did not believe this at all. In 2017, Captain Schettino was charged with manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 16 years in jail. Moving forward, some more interesting facts about Schettino were revealed. Mario Palombo, whom I had talked about at the beginning of the article, was the senior captain.

In 2003, Schettino worked under him. Palombo revealed that Schettino had always been a liar. He said that in many cases, instead of admitting his mistakes, Schettino preferred to lie. That night, it was a matter of chance that another ship’s captain, Roberto Bosio, was onboard the Concordia. He was the captain of the Costa Serena, but that night, he was on Costa Concordia Cruise. But unlike Schettino, he didn’t flee the ship. He kept helping people till the end. And in fact, even before Schettino’s official announcement, he had already started evacuating the people.

Later, he said, “Only a disgraceful man would have left all those passengers on board. It was the most horrible experience of my life, a tragedy, a heartache that I will always carry with me forever. Don’t call me a hero. I just did my duty. A captain’s duty. Actually, this should be the duty of all humans.” Along with the captain, 5 people were arrested. Especially the high-ranking officers on the ship that night. Each was sentenced to 2 years because Captain Schettino made the biggest mistake.

Lesson Learned from the Costa Concordia Cruise Disaster

Today, 11 years after this incident, Schettino is serving his sentence in jail. And if you learn anything from this Costa Concordia Cruise disaster story, it is this.

“Never give the captaincy of your ship to a lying coward who doesn’t know how to admit his mistakes. Leaders who never admit their mistakes and lie to hide them can be extremely dangerous.”