The Tragedy Of Costa Concordia’s Sinking

I know this is a really different post to all my usual ones, but I feel the need to write it because first I’m Italian, second I always loved spent the holidays in cruise ships, third because I’ve been on that cruise in 2010 and last but definetely not least because I’m beside all the families have lost someone tonight.

Tonight, Costa Concordia of Costa Cruises, got stuck offing Giglio’s island (Tuscany), at Punta di Gabbianara’s shallows, the southern point of the island. The last cost of Grosseto’s prefect talks about of 3 dead and 14 injured, but over 70 ones could still be lost at sea and at the moment aren’t quantifiable in an exact way.

Before midnight, Concordia should have started to ship water and slant on right side because of a leak on the left side of the poop. Someone says that the gash is of 30mt but someone even talks of 70mt.

The cruise had about 4,229 people on board between passengers and crew and it sail off Civitavecchia (near Rome) at 7pm for Savona (Liguria) for the first lap of the travel called “Scent of citrus” that had to end in Marsille (France) after have been in Sardinia, Sicily and Spain.

The cause of the accident is still uncertainty. The most probable is the one of the leak who should have opened a gash in the cruise and should be slant before on a side and then on the other of 20° degrees, shipping water immediatly. A reconstruction affirmed by a lot of passengers which say to have listened a “huge bang”, even though it isn’t rejected the hypotesis of an electric failure.

The rescue team have been really quick but go on until 4am in the moring and the situation was really complicated. A lot of people jumped in the sea for try to save themselves.

On board, over 1000 people of crew there were almost 1000 Italian, 500 German, 160 French and dozen of UK turists.

I wanna remember Costa Concordia in this way, with some photos shot by me and my dad in summer 2010:

Little personal note: I really hate when people in this kind of situation only think at superstition and says that yesterday was Friday the 13th, please a bit of respect for all the dead people and all the people in general who passed such terrible hours with the only hope to survive to this sinking.