Italian Cruise Ship Disaster

Although I'd imagine at least as much as we know now - that some that we told to go back to their cabins instead of going to the life boats may have survived.

If water rushed in where the hole was and there were crew in that area - those deaths may have been unavoidable as well.

lots of drunk people getting panic

the crew didn't need to be there to get them off the ship - it seems (at least what survivors have reported) that they got themselves off the ship - the crew was no where to be found

Costa Concordia: Filipino waiters and cooks hailed as national heroes
01/20/2012
PHILIPPINES

Almost 300 members of the ship’s crew are from the Philippines. They helped passengers evacuate the ship, putting their own lives on the line. Their action has been seen around the country thanks to an amateur video shot during the rescue operation.

Manila (AsiaNews) – Two-hundred ninety-six Filipinos (pictured) working on the MS Costa Concordia as waiters, dishwaters, cooks and cleaners have become national heroes for saving hundreds of passengers during the ship’s evacuation.

Now partially submerged, the Costa Concordia is a cruise ship that capsized off Giglio Island, in Tuscany (Italy), after it ran aground. The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest for dereliction of duty when he abandoned ship before all passengers were rescued. He is currently the object of an international media campaign. The ship’s operators, Costas Cruisers, are trying to lay all the blame for the accident on him.

The actions of the Filipino staff have made the front pages of Filipino newspapers. An amateur video made by a crewmember shows waiters, cooks and stewardesses, going around helping injured and panic-stricken passengers.

News reports have highlighted survivors’ stories, describing the heroic behaviour of Filipino staff on the Costa Concordia.

“Those who helped us were cooks and stewardesses, all Filipinos," a French tourist said. “They roped themselves together to help us get down to the lifeboats.”

Soon after the incident, President Aquino said, “You are men and women of courage, heroism and dedication. We commend you for showing to the world the best traits of the Filipino seafarershttp://www.asianews.it/news-en/Costa-Concordia:-Filipino-waiters-and-cooks-hailed-as-national-heroes-23756.html

HYDERABAD
,January 20, 2012
Costa crew members safe home

Inside the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad the air was emotionally charged on Thursday, when crew members from the star-crossed luxury liner Costa Concordia arrived home into anxious hugs of near and dear ones.

Smiles, sobs and squeezing embraces awaited the seven crew members from the city who escaped from the ship that ran aground off the Italian coast on Friday. Two more members are expected to arrive on Friday.

The vessel had 4,200 people on board, and at least 11 are suspected to have been killed in the incident. The search for missing persons is on, even as the ship is sinking bit by bit.

Three hundred Indians worked on the ship, of who, nine were from Hyderabad. They had all joined the kitchen crew a year ago after completing their course in Hotel Management from the Culinary Academy of India, Begumpet.

After alighting from the Emirates flight at about 8 p.m., the crew members Jonathan Paturi, Srinu Reddy, Suresh Chari, B. Srikanth Yadav, Ravikumar Dharani, Shashidhar, and Ramesh Babu were greeted by excited family members who burst into tears on seeing them. Garlands and flower bouquets, apart from squeals of joy animated the vicinity for a while.

They were all flown down from Rome with a transit halt of eight hours in Dubai. The Ministry of External Affairs in co-ordination with the Ministry of Overseas Indians Affairs organised their return. They did not get a hero's welcome for nothing back home. If not for their swift response in the moment of crisis, many lives would have been lost.

“When the incident happened, we were on the third deck. As we came to know of what was happening, we ran to the fourth deck and immediately got into rescue operations,” recalled Jonathan Paturi whose family stays in Moulali.

Each crew member had one life boat capacious enough to carry 100 passengers. Jonathan recounts that he must have led at least 450 passengers to safety by ferrying them in round trips to the island nearby. Though many lost valuables in the haste that ensued, Costa, the company which owned the cruise liner promised to dispatch whichever valuables it could salvage from the wreck...
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article2815032.ece

Jan. 16: Indian staff of the Costa Concordia, the cruise liner that keeled over off the Tuscan coast, have challenged claims that the crew had deserted passengers and were too busy saving themselves.

“We have heard of reports (about the unseemly behaviour of the crew) but they are not true. The Indian crew members made themselves safe because if we are not safe, how can we save others? Then, we saved the lives of others. We were the last to come off,” Santosh Lelhal, 31, a security guard who hails from Mumbai, told The Telegraph today.

It emerged today that of the 203 Indians on board, only one was a passenger and the person has been listed as safe. The remaining 202 Indians belonged to the crew, of which one — Terence Russell Rebello — is missing. A crew member told this newspaper that Rebello, a waiter, was last seen helping passengers.

Damning headlines in the Daily Mail and elsewhere — “Forget women and children first. Burly crewmen led the race for the lifeboats” — were discounted by Lelhal and others, at least as far as the Indian crew were concerned.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120117/jsp/frontpage/story_15015659.jsp

James Thomas, Costa Concordia Hero, Acted As Human Ladder To Save Passengers

British teenager James Thomas had only been working aboard the Costa Concordia for six months when the cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany last Friday.

But when panic erupted in the rush to get the ship's 4,200 passengers to safety, the 19-year-old dancer demonstrated composure beyond his years by turning himself a human ladder to allow dozens of men and woman to climb to safety, the Daily Mirror reports.

Thomas told the Mirror that some passengers accidentally went to the wrong floor, one level above the loading dock, as they raced to reach the ship's life boats.

Realizing crew members "were going to have to do something drastic," Thomas stretched his 6 foot 3 inch frame across the gap and allowed passengers to climb down his body into the rafts below.

"We couldn't get the lifeboats off and the life rafts the staff use were stuck to the side of the ship. It was frightening. People couldn't get down, the drop was too far, so I lowered myself into position. I grabbed the lifeboat with one arm and the upper deck rail with the other and let people climb on my shoulder and down my body," Thomas told the Daily Mirror.

As for his own escape, Thomas said he was later pulled into a lifeboat by other passengers.

"The last people I helped were a Frenchman and his disabled wife. He grabbed me by the cuff and pulled me into one of the boats," Thomas told the Mirror..,

According to Reuters, most of the ship's 1,023 crew members were hired to run its many bars, casinos, swimming pools, and theaters and were not qualified seamen.

"I wouldn't blame the crew. I think they behaved as professionally as possible," Marco Mandirola, President of the IBLA, an association representing tugboat operators and harbor pilots," told Reuters. "Onboard personnel that aren't part of the ship's crew do a series of courses but they're not sailors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/17/costa-concordia-disaster-james-thomas-british-teenager-dancer_n_1210495.html

Two-hundred ninety-six Filipinos (pictured) working on the MS Costa Concordia as waiters, dishwaters, cooks and cleaners have become national heroes for saving hundreds of passengers during the ship’s evacuation.

All we currently have is many reports from some of the cruise passenagers who experienced it. Unfortunately for the crew, the passengers, at least at this stage, seem to feel the crew was clueless and of no help and the only help them seemed to get were from those individuals with the least knowledge - like cooks and kitchen help.

But honestly it is hard to know - knowing the media - they are going pull the stories that make the most exciting stuff - so saying that all the captain's crew helped and did their job is less exciting than saying the cowards went and saved themselves and the lowly workers were heros saving the terrified passengers.

Isn't this what I had been saying? It was not the crew in the sense captain, crew responsible for the passenager's safety but cooks, kitchen help, etc - those that ended up being the heros

''There was no 'women and children first' policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting.''

Costa Concordia captain ‘cried like a baby’ after the crash
Agence France-Presse
Jan 20, 2012

ROME — The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship “cried like a baby” as he hugged its chaplain hours after the Costa’s crash, the luxury liner’s priest said in an interview Friday.

Interviewed by French magazine Famille Chrétienne, Father Raffaele Malena said he was among the last to leave the ship at around 1:30 a.m local time on Saturday and then stayed “close to the injured” in the tiny harbour of Giglio.

“I descended on the rope ladder. I was picked up by a little lifeboat,” said Father Malena, who has returned to his village of Ciro Marina in Calabria.

“At around 2:30 a.m. I spoke to the captain (Francesco Schettino). He embraced me for about a quarter of an hour and cried like a baby,” Father Malena said...

The head of the vessel’s owner, Costa Cruises, meanwhile said in an interview with the Corriere della Sera daily published Friday that the captain had warned the company too late of the scale of the disaster.

Pier Luigi Foschi said the first call from Francesco Schettino to Costa came at 10:05 p.m.— almost half-an-hour after the ship hit rocks.

The announcement to evacuate the ship came 68 minutes after that call.

“This hour and more of delay is not normal. It’s unjustified,” Mr. Foschi said, adding: “I can’t sleep at night…. If the ship had been abandoned earlier we wouldn’t have lost human lives.”

Of Capt. Schettino, he said: “He has always been considered very able on a technical level… but he could have some small problems with his character even if nothing emerged on a formal level.”

“He was seen as a bit hard on his colleagues. He liked to show off.”

Mr. Foschi said he realised the scale of the disaster “only when the evacuation signal was issued.”...

For the future, the Costa boss said the company would install the same alerts on land as on the ship to be warned if the vessel was steering off course and would increase the powers of the company to overrule captains.

He added: “Something like this will never happen again. Never again.”...

Father Malena, the 73-year-old ship’s chaplain, who has worked for Costa for around 20 years, also praised the bravery of crew members amid panic during the evacuation.

“There were heroes of all nationalities… They were shaking with fear. They were threatened. They were telling people to stop boarding lifeboats which were full but people were getting in anyway,” he said.

The Catholic priest said he was also angry at some of the passengers, “who are going to sue because they have lost 30, 40 or 50,000 euros in jewels.”

“Me, I defend the weak. Not the rich and the billionaires,” he added.

The priest said he went to pray for a few moments in the ship’s chapel before leaving the ship.

“Baby Jesus was still in his manger. I told him, crying like a child: ‘We are all about to die. I’m asking you for nothing short of a miracle. Please let as few people die as possible!’”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/20/costa-concordia-captain-cried-like-a-baby-after-the-crash-rescue-operations-suspended-amid-choppy-seas/

Quote:

Costa Concordia captain ‘cried like a baby’ after the crash
Agence France-Presse
Jan 20, 2012

ROME — The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship “cried like a baby” as he hugged its chaplain hours after the Costa’s crash, the luxury liner’s priest said in an interview Friday.