Cruise News Tragic Concordia by Simon Veness
At least 25 dead; seven still missing; dozens injured; and a captain under house arrest facing charges of alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship.
and to work out what lessons the cruise business needs to learn. Fundamentally, cruising remains a safe and safety-conscious proposition. The Concordia was the first serious loss of life since the Andrea Doria in 1956. But clearly for all the modern safety standards, something went drastically wrong, both for the ship to hit the rocks, literally, and for the apparent chaos and confusion of the evacuation operation. Happily, most lines have decided not to
C
OSTA CRUISES has seen its bookings plummet by a reported 30 per cent – possibly more with the additional problems for their Costa Allegra in the Indian Ocean – and the whole cruise industry has felt the effects of a media frenzy over Costa Concordia. Serious questions hover over Costa’s safety preparation and evacuation procedures, and the first hearing – in the US Senate – has already taken place, with huge criticism for both Captain Francesco Schettino and Costa themselves, with survivors of the tragedy insisting they felt “betrayed” by the cruise line.
Allegra, too
The Italian authorities will have a much lengthier enquiry in due course and the courts have yet to become seriously involved in the lawsuits that will surely follow. The human toll is certainly sizeable and the financial cost could be equally severe for Costa. That is the story so far from the awful incident on the night of February 13 on the rocky shores of the Isola del Giglio in Italy, where Concordia hit a submerged reef and tore open its hull in catastrophic fashion. Now comes the need to take stock of the
events more than two months ago, to analyse what actually happened, and why;
As if one maritime disaster on its hands was not enough, Costa suffered another blow at the end of February when its Costa Allegra suffered an engine-room fire at sea that left it adrift in the Indian Ocean without power. The 800-passenger ship had to be towed back to the Seychelles and those aboard were without hot food and full sanitation for almost three days. A much older vessel than Concordia, Allegra was launched in 1969 and
12 WORLD OF CRUISING I Spring 2012
wait for any enquiry to be told that all lifeboat drills must be carried out BEFORE a ship leaves port, not just within 24 hours of departure. Other measures will surely follow, including how to make the multi-lingual process less chaotic (as reported by several of our readers – See Letters on Page 8). But the Italian enquiry also has to get to the bottom of the confusion over Captain Schettino’s apparent disregard for his set route by going so close to Giglio. And, if it turns out there was a general approval for this manoeuvre from those in Costa’s head office, there will be a lot more questions to answer. Most of all, though, the inquiry owes it to those who have died to get to the bottom of the situation and to make sure the sequence of events involving ‘Captain Gutless,’ as many in the media dubbed him, can never happen again. Costa is a $3billion-a-year industry in Italy and it cannot afford to lose its way completely, but the public must be reassured it can be trusted and that “Europe’s biggest cruise line” does things the right way.
rebuilt for cruising in 1992, but without the back-up engine and power propulsion that most modern ships have. No-one was hurt and the passengers
and crew were safely mustered for a possible evacuation without serious incident, and industry analyst Jaime Katz insisted: “It should restore confidence that the last event was a one-off event and show that the staff is pretty well-versed in how to handle an emergency when it occurs.”
Credit: Rvongher, Wikimedia
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