How The Costa Cruise Ship Horror Unfolded

Passengers were enjoying their first gala evening meal aboard the Costa Concordia when they heard a "loud bang" and the lights suddenly went out.

The holidaymakers were only two hours into their Mediterranean voyage - and reportedly had not even had their safety briefing.
Amateur video footage showed calm scenes as passengers walked through the corridors to their rooms to fetch life jackets, unaware of the danger they were in.
The crew had reassured them that it was just a generator fault.
But the calmness quickly turned to chaos as the boat was flooded with water "within two to three minutes".
The vessel quickly started to list dramatically to the left, sending some passengers tumbling down stairwells.

The ship then righted itself before listing again, this time to the right - and that was when it started to sink.
It was then - at about 10pm on Friday - that Captain Francesco Schettino gave the order to abandon the 290m-long ship with seven short whistles.
Footage captured on a mobile phone showed passengers scrambling to get on lifeboats.
One person filmed the chaotic scenes on their lifeboat with everyone screaming when the rope broke as the small boat was being lowered to the water.
Some passengers likened scenes on the blacked-out, sinking vessel to those on the Titanic and said people ran from restaurants as crockery smashed all around them.
Within hours, the boat, built in 2006, was rested on an 80 degree angle with almost half of its right side under water.
Rescuers said they plucked 100 people from the sea overnight Friday and a further 60 people who had not managed to escape in lifeboats were rescued from the ship.
The six-hour evacuation operation ended with a passenger taken to safety at 3am on Saturday.

Police divers then started the painstaking job of scouring the ship wreck and surrounding waters for those people who were still missing, a figure thought to be 70.
A South Korean couple on their honeymoon were rescued late on Saturday - almost 24 hours after the accident.
They were discovered in the unsubmerged part of the liner when firefighters heard their screams.
Then some 36 hours later, crew member Manrico Gianpetroni was found alive trapped inside the ship with a broken leg.
The three survivors gave hope to rescuers that more of the missing would be found alive.
But hours later it emerged that the bodies of two elderly men had been found in the submerged part of the vessel, taking the death toll from the disaster to five.
Officials said 15 of the 4,234 people aboard the ship are still unaccounted for as a search and rescue operation continues

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Ship Horror
• Costa Cruise Ship
• Mediterranean voyage
• Concordia
• lifeboats
• rocks
• ship wreck sink
• water
• unsubmerged

[twinturbonissan300zx]

The amazing thing is, the titanic, took 3 hours to sink. And it never listed like this thing did.

[Digispyeu]

@twinturbonissan300zx Do you not think the rocks its lying on had a huge factor on how its listed?

[tiehut]

Welcome to the Concordia magic show!  For my next trick, I will make the ship disappear!

[TheWonderboy1999]

Impressive news room!

[WLDB]

@twinturbonissan300zx The two situations aren't comparable. Different ships, different design, different damage and in a different place. 

[thogy]

@twinturbonissan300zx totally two different situations, nothing in common other than both were at sea when they struck an object

[TheBlazersfan22]

@twinturbonissan300zx dont forget the titanic and the concordia are two different ships. I dont think the titanic had huge elevators , lots of bars and a huge god dang theater at the front. also was very decked out in a lot of crap.

[mepizzasmangled]

How The Costa Cruise Ship Horror Unfolded: well son, where running in to financial problems, i'm going to need you to do what they did in 1911, crash the ship.

[TangeClown]

@GayBoyRunning ahaaaaaaaaaaaahhh

[TangeClown]

if you cant swim 400 meters to save your life, wtf are you doing on a cruise?

[TangeClown]

@YuukiZeroKiryu1 and ship designing and structure has improved since the titanic

[lostwarrior485]

@YuukiZeroKiryu1 the titanic was hit on its right side in the front to middle. This incident was on the left middle to near end. But your theory about these ships having more height is true.

[YuukiZeroKiryu1]

@twinturbonissan300zx True, but i think the Titanic was hit differently than the Concordia was . . . and i think modern ships like the Concordia have more height to them than the Titanic did, thus making them a little more top-heavy. Not entirely sure tho, just my theory