Tuscan archipelago cruise ship disaster
Six tourists dead and several wounded on Costa Concordia
Costa Cruise Lines’ Concordia has had another crash, this time in the Tuscan archipelago. The vessel left Civitavecchia today, heading toward Savona on the Italian Riviera. About two hours later, passengers heard a loud thump, and the lights went out. Passengers in the restaurant saw their tables were tilting, and dishes sliding to the floor.
The crash happened in shallow waters, a few hundred yards from Isola del Giglio, at Punta Gabbianara. Concordia began to take on water through a gash in her aft, listing 20 degrees toward the starboard side. 3200 passengers and 1000 crew were evacuated from the ship, but some passengers panicked – they jumped off the decks believing there would be a massive plunge to the bottom of the ocean (as was told in the movie Titanic). Passengers who leaped from the decks into the shallow water were injured. Concordia’s lifeboats, fishermans’ boats and a ferry came to the rescue; firefighters from Livorno and Civitavecchia assisted in the emergency.
Most of the passengers on board were Italian, as well as some French and German citizens.
"The company is working with the utmost care to give maximum support," Costa said in the blog statement.
The Concordia, built in 2006, was on a Mediterranean cruise from Rome with stops in Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo, according to the cruise line. It was unclear how far into the cruise the grounding occurred.
On Nov 24 2008, Concordia had an accident in the Port of Palermo, Sicily as she was maneuvering into dock. She hit a floating tank due to high winds, and experienced structural damage. The ship was built in 2006 in Genoa, Italy.
Another Costa ship was involved in a deadly 2010 accident when the Costa Europa crashed into a pier in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh during stormy weather, killing three crew members.
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