Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Italy's Titanic

Not everyone is seeing it that way.

"Cruise ship runs aground off Italy; Night of chaos and fear leaves 3 dead, 40 missing" by Frances D’Emilio and Nicole Winfield  |  Associated Press, January 15, 2012

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy - The terrifying, chaotic escape from the luxury liner was straight out of the movie “Titanic’’ for many of the 4,000-plus passengers and crew on the cruise ship, which ran aground off the Italian coast late Friday and flipped on its side with a 160-foot gash in its hull....

Another distorted script from the AmeriKan media.

The Friday the 13th grounding of the Concordia was one of the most dramatic cruise ship accidents in recent memory. It immediately raised a host of questions....

Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the US-based cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and said it was cooperating with the investigation. The captain was detained for questioning by prosecutors, investigating him for suspected manslaughter, abandoning ship before all others, and causing a shipwreck, state TV and Sky TV said....

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"Cruise ship’s captain held for questions; Navigation errors suspected in sinking" by Gaia Pianigiani and Sarah Maslin Nir New York Times / January 16, 2012

GIGLIO, Italy - As rescue workers extracted three survivors and two more bodies from the hull of a sunken cruise ship off the coast of Italy yesterday, authorities focused attention on the ship’s captain, who the ship’s owner said may have been responsible for the grounding that sank the ship and killed at least five people.

The captain of the Costa Cruises liner, Francesco Schettino, 52, of Naples, was detained for questioning by the Italian police on charges of manslaughter, failure to offer assistance, and abandonment of the ship.

Yesterday, Costa Cruises issued a statement saying “there may have been significant human error’’ by Schettino that caused the ship to ground on a rocky outcropping near this resort island on Friday....

The statement appeared to diverge from declarations the company made Saturday insisting that the ship, the Costa Concordia, had followed the normal course it follows “52 times a year,’’ and commending Schettino, saying he “immediately understood the severity of the situation’’ and began preparing to evacuate the vessel.

Accounts of survivors and witnesses had raised questions about whether the ship had veered off course and suggested the crew was ill-prepared to manage an emergency....

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That's when I abandoned ship.

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