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Captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

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  1. Captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

    According to today’s Telegraph, the chief prosecutor in charge of the inquiry has implored investigators to look beyond the behaviour of the captain to the role played by the liner’s owners, Costa Cruises.

    His comments were published as salvage experts began the difficult task of removing around 2,400 tonnes of fuel from the vessel.

    Beniamino Deidda, the prosecutor, said in an interview carried by several Italian newspapers today: “For the moment, attention is generally concentrated on the responsibility of the captain, who showed himself to be tragically inadequate. But who chooses the captain?”

    He said investigators needed to avert their gaze to the decisions taken by “the employer; that is to say, the ship’s owner”.

    Deidda, who has spent a large part of his career dealing with health and safety cases, said numerous other issues needed to be addressed.

    He specifically mentioned “lifeboats that did not come down, crew who did not know what to do [and] scant preparation in crisis management”.

    He added that it was “absurd” that in at least one instance, recorded on video after the Costa Concordia was holed, a member of the crew should have told passengers to return to their cabins.

    Schettino has also maintained that his employers have a shared responsibility for what happened. Among the questions the inquiry is seeking to answer is why more than an hour elapsed between impact and the order to abandon ship.

    Questioned by prosecutors last week, the captain said that he was in frequent contact with a representative of the company during that period.

    Schettino and his first officer are the sole formal suspects in the inquiry, which is looking at whether to bring charges of manslaughter and the illegal abandoning of a ship.

    On Monday, islanders reported seeing a large fuel slick in the waters off Giglio, which are protected as a marine nature reserve. The fuel, however, is thought by the authorities to have come from the initial impact with a cluster of rocks just south of the port of Giglio.

    The official co-ordinating operations on the island said on Monday there was still no evidence that fuel had leaked from the Costa Concordia’s tanks.

Graphic: Saving the Costa Concordia

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Graphic: Saving the Costa Concordia

Click on the image for a larger view.One of the tasks Costa Cruises has before it is to try to extract the fuel from the stranded Costa Concordia and to attempt to raise the vessel.

Costa has said in a statement that it “recognized the need to promptly address issues concerning the protection of the marine environment following the Costa Concordia accident.”

The line has commissioned Smit Salvage of Rotterdam, Netherlands, to draw up a plan to recover the fuel reserves from the Concordia.

Toronto newspaper the National Post this week constructed a graphic of some of the possible techniques and outcomes of extracting the fuel and maneuvering the ship. The article is here. Click on the graphic to see a larger version.

Concordia captain navigated ship off course, says Costa CEO

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Concordia captain navigated ship off course, says Costa CEO

By Donna Tunney

Francesco Schettino, captain of the partially sunken Costa Concordia, diverted from the cruise line’s normal route from Civitavecchia to Savona, Italy, Costa Cruises CEO Pier Luigi Foschi said in a media briefing Monday.

Foschi explained that Costa ships sail the Concordia’s northern route out of Civitavecchia 100 times a year, using detailed charts.

Schettino, who has been detained by Italian police, diverted from the route so that passengers could view the Tuscan island of Giglio up close, Foschi said.

The cruise ship struck rocks near Giglio on Friday, and the ship tilted into the sea.

Since the Italian authorities have seized the ship and all navigational records, Foschi said it is unclear which charts Schettino was using.

“We are working with investigators who will understand what happened. We have to inform all of you that the prosecutor has the ‘black box,’ which has all the information to enable us to understand what happened,” Foschi said.

Emergency search-and-rescue teams have been combing through the wrecked ship since the weekend and found three survivors and the bodies of two passengers who died inside the vessel.

The death toll from the accident is six, according to reports. Twenty-nine people are still unaccounted for, the Italian Coast Guard said on Monday evening. Authorities earlier said that 16 people were missing.

Four crew members and 25 passengers are still missing. According to Fox News, a U.S. couple from Minnesota is among the missing.

There were more than 4,200 passengers and crew aboard the Concordia.

Costa hired a salvage company on Sunday to determine how to remove the ship from its location in about 98 feet of water.

Foschi said the company is “very, very concerned” about environmental impact, since the Concordia was loaded with 2,300 tons of fuel. The ship had departed Civitavecchia on a seven-day Western Mediterranean cruise a few hours before the collision.

Initial reports that the ship had grounded may have been mistaken, given the confirmed depth of the water.

Foschi said that arrangements would be made for passengers booked on future Concordia sailings. “This has not been our priority right now,” he said.

Foschi added that it’s too soon to determine whether there will be an inordinate number of cancellations in the wake of the disaster.

“We will be looking into that,” he said.

He said that Costa’s loyal customers and its “quality track record over 60 years” would help ensure its future operations.

Costa’s reputation eventually will emerge as strong as it was before the Concordia disaster, said Foschi.

This report was updated Monday evening to add that 29 people on the Costa Concordia were unaccounted for.