Key dates in Costa Concordia shipwreck, trial and cleanup

Table Of Content

• A ‘cold-blooded killer’ called Smiley haunted L.A. for 14 years. How he finally faced justice
• Costa Concordia salvage mission gives families hope for news of the missing
• Israeli airstrike in Gaza’s south kills at least 9 Palestinians, including 6 children
• Regulatory and industry response
• Costa Concordia righted after 'perfect' salvage operation

Details of the final moments of the 32 people who died in the Costa Concordia cruise ship tragedy have emerged in a prosecution report. Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. Thirty-two people died after the Costa Concordia cruis ship ran aground with more than 4,000 passengers and crew on 13 January 2012, only hours after leaving the Italian port of Civitavecchia. GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

A ‘cold-blooded killer’ called Smiley haunted L.A. for 14 years. How he finally faced justice

Costa Crociere SpA has been a big customer of an Italian state-controlled shipbuilder. But most awards totaled tens of thousands of euros, far more than the 11,000 euros Costa paid to survivors who declined to press civil suits. The total of all damages and court costs of the lawyers who brought the suits, was not immediate available. That’s about six months for every person who died,” Decre said, referring to the 16 years Schettino received. “My head was sacrificed to serve economic interests,” the 54-year-old Neapolitan seaman said, unable to finish his statement.

Costa Concordia salvage mission gives families hope for news of the missing

Read more about the trial of the Costa Concordia captain who helmed the ill-fated voyage and was roundly criticized for his handling of the incident. The ship was eventually refloated in July 2014 and taken to Genoa, where the scrapping operation is expected to take two years. The contract - awarded jointly to salvage companies Titan and Micoperi - was described as an unprecedented operation. The ship was holed on the left-hand side, started taking on water and began to tilt. “It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said. Cases like this typically take years to completely resolve, said Martin Davies, director of Tulane University Law School’s Maritime Law Center.

Israeli airstrike in Gaza’s south kills at least 9 Palestinians, including 6 children

Costa Cruises May Face Further Lawsuits Over Costa Concordia Disaster - The Maritime Executive

Costa Cruises May Face Further Lawsuits Over Costa Concordia Disaster.

Posted: Wed, 29 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In an incredible feat of engineering, the capsized Costa Concordia, which had been listing on its side, was pulled upright in a procedure known as parbuckling. Cruise Critic was on hand to capture the moment as the ship returned to vertical. See photos of Costa Concordia in the first days after it capsized and sank, as well as the survivors taking in the scene from Giglio, Italy. Before salvage work could begin, 2,400 tonnes of fuel had to be extracted from its tanks.

Five Costa Concordia staff convicted over shipwreck in Italy

That would leave Schettino, who depicts himself as an innocent scapegoat, as the only defendant risking a long sentence. Some of the 4,200 passengers and crew who were aboard the Concordia said Schettino should not be the only person tried. The list of the victims began with a Frenchman, Francis Servel, who "not having found a place on the lifeboat, threw himself into the sea without a life vest", the court official read. He was "sucked toward the bottom of the whirlpool produced by the final flipping over on the right side of the ship, and then died due to asphyxiation". The Concordia, on a week-long Mediterranean cruise, speared a jagged granite reef when, prosecutors allege, Schettino steered the ship too close to Giglio's rocky shores as a favour to a crewman whose relatives lived on the island.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory. More than 4,000 passengers and crew were onboard the doomed Costa Concordia when it struck rocks after Schettino allegedly changed course in order to carry out a sail-by salute of a Mediterranean island to impress holidaymakers.

Safety regulations

As it made its way north-west along the Italian coastline, Captain Francesco Schettino ordered the ship to be steered close to the island of Giglio as a "salute". Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case. “For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water. Experts say the cost to rebuild the collapsed bridge could be at least $400 million or as much as twice that, though much will depend on the new design.

Regulatory and industry response

Other victims drowned aboard as violently swirling water rose up inside the ship. The court heard how some passengers were "sucked into a vortex" of water rushing into the Concordia when it capsized. This happened after the crew told them to go to the other side of the ship where lifeboats were being launched, and the passengers ended up trying to walk down a tilting corridor. The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

Costa Concordia righted after 'perfect' salvage operation

The accident has been called one of the worst cruise ship disasters in modern times. Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. “I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats. With Giglio Island lying in a protected marine area, environmental issues relating to the Concordia wreck were of particular concern.

Lawyers for Schettino said they were making a last-ditch attempt to reach a plea bargain in the case, which could result in a long prison sentence if the captain is convicted. The bodies of victims No 31 and 32 were never found, but after a long, futile search of the ship's interior and the nearby waters they were declared dead. The later was Carnival Dream class weighed 130,000 GRT, and was built in Fincantieri. Parbuckling is a centuries-old method that winches a sunken or listing ship upright while it is anchored at a pivot point known as the “deadman.” Sounds simple, right? To hoist it, nine enormous rectangular compartments, called sponsons, will be bolted to the ship, each equipped with a hydraulic pulley; the pulleys lead to 36 steel cables as thick as lampposts that attach to six underwater platforms. Once Costa Concordia was upright, it needed to be raised up out of the water and refloated to be towed to a scrapyard.

Lloyd's List breaks global story on Costa Concordia cruise ship - Informa PLC

Lloyd's List breaks global story on Costa Concordia cruise ship.

Posted: Tue, 17 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In July 2014 the Concordia—outfitted with a number of steel containers serving as flotation devices—was towed to Genoa, Italy, where it was dismantled for scrap. The Costa Concordia was owned by Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & PLC. When launched in 2005, it was Italy’s largest cruise ship, measuring 951 feet (290 metres) long with a passenger capacity of 3,780; by comparison, the Titanic was 882.5 feet (269 metres) long and could accommodate up to 2,435 passengers. It featured four swimming pools, a casino, and reportedly the largest spa on a ship. In July 2006 the vessel undertook its maiden voyage, a seven-day cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, with stops in Italy, France, and Spain. The total cost of the disaster, including victims' compensation, refloating, towing and scrapping costs, is estimated at $2 billion, more than three times the ship's $612 million construction cost.

The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated. Costa Concordia was declared a "constructive total loss" by the cruise line's insurer, and her salvage was "one of the biggest maritime salvage operations". On 16 September 2013, the parbuckle salvage of the ship began, and by the early hours of 17 September, the ship was set upright on her underwater cradle.

It’s a mechanism that has been employed as a defense in many of the most notable maritime disasters, said James Mercante, a New York City-based attorney with over 30 years of experience in maritime law. The companies’ “limitation of liability” petition is a routine but important procedure for cases litigated under U.S. maritime law. A federal court in Maryland ultimately decides who is responsible—and how much they owe—for what could become one of the costliest catastrophes of its kind. While insisting Schettino deserves conviction and a stiff prison sentence, the plaintiffs’ lawyers had lamented to the court that no one from the cruise company’s upper echelons was put on trial. Like other survivors, Decre recalled how many of the passengers weren’t given any safety drills when they began the Mediterranean cruise. Mr Verusio wrote that they died ''because they were unable to find any space in a lifeboat on deck four, on the left-hand side, and they were then directed to the right-hand side by crew members on the same deck but as they were crossing the inside corridor ...

During the 19-month trial, prosecutors claimed that he was an “idiot,” while Schettino countered that his actions had saved lives and that he was being scapegoated. In addition, he noted the steering error by the helmsman, but a maritime expert testified that regardless of the mistake, the collision was unavoidable. In February 2015 Schettino was convicted on all charges and sentenced to more than 16 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but it was upheld in May 2017; Schettino began serving his sentence shortly thereafter. Costa Concordia disaster, the capsizing of an Italian cruise ship on January 13, 2012, after it struck rocks off the coast of Giglio Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

If all goes well, the two-hour par­buckling maneuver will climax months of work by 450 technicians. Steps include drilling 26 holes in the granite coast to hold pillars for the platforms. The sponsons will be filled with seawater to act as a counterweight as the ship is lifted. The operation had to be suspended a number of times as the ship shifted position. Other details emerged at pre-trial hearings, including excerpts of the frantic conversations between the Captain and his crew in the aftermath of the accident, captured by the ship's "black box" voice recorder.

Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it! This cleared the way to arrange for the ultimate salvaging and scrapping of the ship. The wreckage closed the Port of Baltimore, a major shipping port, potentially costing the area’s economy hundreds of millions of dollars in lost labor income alone over the next month.