Europe’ s biggest cruise ship operator yesterday sought to distance itself from a disaster in which up to 32 people are feared to have died, as legal pressure mounted on the company. Grilled by a Senate committee in Rome, Costa Crociere chief Pier Luigi Foschi said the company was misled by the luxury liner’ s captain about the scale of the disaster after it crashed into rocks off the island of Giglio. Foschi admitted however that the company — which is part of US industry leader Carnival Corp — did sometimes encourage its captains to sail close to the coast, saying the practice was "in demand" and "helps enrich the product". In this case, Foschi stressed that the manoeuvre "was not authorised" and should have respected a number of criteria for sailing near the coast, adding: "You don’ t go at 16 knots 300 metres from the shore." The embattled chief executive gave senators a blow-by-blow account of captain Francesco Schettino’ s contacts with Roberto Ferrarini, Costa Crociere’ s chief crisis unit officer, on the night of the tragedy on January 13. Foschi said Schettino first called Ferrarini at 9:57pm local time, about 10 minutes after the giant 17-deck Costa Concordia hit rocks, tearing a massive gash in the ship’ s hull. "Schettino said that he had a big problem on board. He told Ferrarini that he had hit a rock and there had been a blackout. The captain said that only one of the sealed chambers was flooded," Foschi told senators. In another call at 10:06pm, Schettino told Ferrarini that a second sealed chamber was flooded "but said the stability of the ship was not in danger". Schettino "was very calm and said the situation was under control", he said. But at 10:33pm Schettino said "the listing of the ship was increasing" and two minutes later he told Ferrarini that the ship would be abandoned. "Ferrarini says he was completely surprised by the abandonment of the ship. He says that judging from the previous telephone conversations he could not have understood that the situation was so extreme," Foschi said. Schettino is under house arrest, accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship along with first officer Ciro Ambrosio. At the scene of the giant wreck in Giglio, the head of rescue operations Franco Gabrielli said it would take "a miracle" to find any more survivors on the giant half-submerged ship 12 days after the crash. Fire chief Ennio Aquilino said crews have not been able to reach several parts of the ship, including decks one and two, because divers can only last a maximum of 50 minutes under water and passageways are cluttered. US lawyers and Italian consumer group Codacons were to present a class action lawsuit against Carnival Corp later Wednesday on behalf of more than 150 passengers and crew, saying there could be payouts of at least 125,000 euros ($A154,000). Top Italian lawyer Giulia Bongiorno was also readying a class action suit on behalf of about 30 people. The confirmed death toll from the disaster has reached 16 and emergency crews are searching for 16 still missing. There were a total of 4229 people on board on the first day of a seven-day cruise when the ship hit rocks just as many passengers were settling down to dinner, sparking scenes of panic with many jumping into the sea to escape. Crews from Dutch company Smit Salvage are now looking for ways to extract the ship’ s 2380 tonnes of fuel without causing any spill in the Tuscan archipelago, Europe’ s biggest marine sanctuary and a popular holiday spot. Officials said the pumping was not expected to begin before Saturday. Gabrielli said a thin oil slick measuring some 60,000 square metres may have come from the ship and that there had also been contamination from some toxic substances on board. More leaks from the investigation into Schettino emerged on Tuesday, with a recording of a phone conversation the day after the disaster in which he is heard recounting the tragedy to his interlocutor. "When I understood that the ship was listing, I upped and left," he says at one point — an apparent contradiction to a statement to prosecutors last week in which he said he fell on to a lifeboat and could not get back on board. Schettino also pins the blame on unnamed others for the manoeuvre, saying: "It was the advice of the manager: ‘Go that way, go that way’." "They pissed me off with their ‘Pass through there, pass through there’." "The rocks were there, but the instruments I had weren’ t showing them, so I went through," he added. "So, here we are and it’ s me who’ s paying for everything."

Sezioni:
• Rassegna Stampa
• Rassegna Stampa Estera

Aree Tematiche:
• TRASPORTI

Tags: concordia, costa