Former passengers who were stranded aboard the Carnival Splendor after a November 8, 2010 engine room fire crippled the vessel for three days off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, causing it to be towed to San Diego, spoke out about the Costa Concordia disaster in which the sister ship and near identical twin of the Splendor built by the same Italian shipyard ran aground on a reef on Friday, January 13, 2012 at around 9:00 p.m. CET off Isola del Giglio, Italy, according to reports by KGTV 10News San Diego, Cruise Law News, The Washington Post, Swiss Info, CBN News, and multiple other global media sources published on Sunday, January 15, 2012.
One person interviewed by KGTV said that the separate incidents of the two very similar ocean liners 14-months apart seemed unlikely to be just coincidences in his view.
According to Jim Walker, a South Miami, Florida based maritime attorney with the firm of Walker & O'Neill, "The official statements from the cruise line are factually vague. There is no explanation regarding the cause of the grounding. The cruise line proclaims that the passengers are 'not at risk', but this is probably the usual misleading and false cruise propaganda."
Some passengers, after being ferried ashore in life boats or rescued by five helicopters from the Italian Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force, complained of chaos and confusion on the part of the Costa Concordia crew, complaining that the crew appeared to be helpless to deal with the situation.
They claim that lifeboats did not properly deploy, with some having to be hacked free of their mooring lines, dropping dangerously into the water after a fall of many feet. Others said they were initially told not to abandon ship as staff continued with the diner service which was in progress when the ship went aground.
Some passengers who had actually gone to bed after the ship collided with the reef, only to be awakened by calls on the public address system to go to muster stations and board lifeboats.
Such statements will no doubt be investigated during the formal inquiry into this disaster, as well as during the multiple maritime liability lawsuits which are certain be filed.
The Costa Concordia is the larger of the two vessels. It scraped against a reef, opening a 160-foot rupture in the ship's hull, causing the vessel to eventually become partly submerged, listing at an 80-degree angle on its starboard side.
As a result of the accident, at least five people including four passengers and a crew member are known dead, 64 others have been injured, and at least 17 people are still missing including 2 U.S. citizens, as seen in the attached slide show and video clip which accompany this report.
It is likely that the death toll will rise further.
The ship was carrying 4,299 people, more than 3,000 of whom were passengers, including 989 Italians, 569 Germans, 462 French nationals, 177 Spaniards, and citizens of other nations. Officials at the U.S. Department of State said 126 U.S. nationals were on board.
The superliner is a Concordia-class cruise ship which sailed on its maiden voyage on July 14, 2006, and was christened a week earlier on July 7, in a ceremony in which the champagne bottle that was hurled against the ship's hull failed to break. Some maritime observers considered that as an unlucky sign.
On Sunday, January 15, 2012 the Costa Concordia's master, 52-year-old Captain Francesco Schettino, who has worked for Costa Cruises 11 years, along with the vessel's first officer have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and abandoning ship before passengers were evacuated.
Under Italian maritime law, a captain who abandons a ship in danger can face up to 12 years in prison.
The damage to the ship is considered to be a total loss exceeding $500 million dollars. A Dutch salvage company will remove any fuel remaining on the vessel at the conclusion of a search for missing passengers and crew.
According to Emilio Del Santo of the Coastal Authorities of Livorno, "The ship got in contact with us once the evacuation procedures were already ongoing. At the moment we can't exclude that the ship had some kind of technical problem, and for this reason moved towards the coast in order to save the passengers, the crew and the ship. But they didn't send a mayday."
Officials are trying to determine why the ship did not issue an emergency call for help and why it was navigating so close to the coast. Early reports, confirmed by Costa Cruises, indicate that the Captain chose an unauthorized route closer to the shore, allegedly as a gesture of appreciation to the Mayor of Giglio, Sergio Ortelli.
Costa Cruises issued a statement on Sunday, January 15, saying "Preliminary indications are that there may have been 'significant human error' on the part of the ship's captain."
What might be considered as "hot-dogging" or foolishly showing off could be behind this disaster. Mayor Ortelli had previously thanked the Concordia's captain for the "incredible spectacle" of a previous close pass. He is quoted as saying, "It's a very nice show to see, the ship all lit up when you see it from the land. This time round it went wrong."
An investigation into the accident by Italian authorities will be aided by information from the ship's recovered "black box" which contains data logging the ship's movements and conversations between crew.
NPR correspondent Sylvia Poggioli reported from Rome that local fishermen indicated seas in the area at the time of the accident were calm and visibility was unrestricted.
Both vessels, the Costa Concordia, call sign IBHD, IMO ship identification number 9320544, and the Carnival Splendor, call sign 3EUS, IMO ship identification number 9333163 are almost clone ships built for Carnival Corporation & plc by Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiani S.p.A., a shipbuilding company based in Trieste, Italy.
Each of the cruise ships are rated at between 114,500 and 113,323 gross tonnage, cost in the range of $570 to $697 million U.S. dollars, and were designed to carry over 3,000 passengers and 1,100 crew members.
The Splendor-class Carnival Splendor is a smaller, although newer and more expensive ship which was completed on June 28, 2008 and made its maiden voyage on August 18, 2008, costing almost $700 million dollars. It is registered in Panama and used almost exclusively on Mexican Riviera routes.
By contrast, the Costa Concordia has 17 decks compared to the 13 decks of the Carnival Splendor. It is also longer and narrower than the Splendor, with a length of 952 feet, compared with 950 feet for the Splendor, and a beam of 116-1/2 feet, compared to the much wider 144-foot beam of the Splendor. Both vessels have almost identical draughts, distance from waterline to keel, 27 feet 11 inches for the Concordia, and 27 feet for the Splendor.
It was operated by Costa Cruises based in Genoa, Italy, a company acquired by Carnival Corporation in 2000.
Carnival Corporation & plc is an American-British company, and the world's largest cruise ship operator, with a heritage going back to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) which introduced the first passenger ships in 1844.
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