As Divers Search Cruise Ship, Reason for Crash Is Unclear

As Divers Search Cruise Ship, Reason for Crash Is Unclear

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy — As shaken survivors spoke of a mad crush to flee a sinking cruise ship off the Tuscan coast of Italy on Saturday, raising questions about the crew’s preparedness, Italian authorities arrested the ship’s captain amid concerns that the megaship had steered dangerously off course.
At least three people were killed in the accident, and divers combed the ship’s underwater cabins all day for those still missing, up to 41 people. Early Sunday, rescuers found three survivors still inside the ship, raising hopes that others might still be alive.

The Costa Concordia, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew on a weeklong Mediterranean cruise, slammed into an undetermined object near the island of Giglio on Friday night as passengers for the late seating had just started dinner, tucking into appetizers of grilled mushrooms and scallops.

“In a moment, everything was up in the air,” said Alessandra Grasso, 24, a passenger from Sicily. “People, chairs, glasses, food.”

Anxious survivors, many comparing the experience to the movie “Titanic,” recounted a chaotic and terrifying scene in which some crawled through hallways to escape down perilous ladders to lifeboats, while others leapt overboard into the wintry Tyrrhenian Sea.

Ulrike Schweda, 63, from Germany, was caught in a crowd of people pushing toward a lifeboat, and slipped on the deck. “The most terrible thing was seeing children trying to get down this ladder they had put on the side of the boat,” she said.

Two French citizens and a Peruvian crew member were reported dead, according to a hospital official in Grosseto, Tuscany.

Divers searched until nightfall for the missing, perilously probing the 2,000 cabins for survivors while the Leviathan ship lay on its side in the water, a boulder poking through a 160-foot gash in its hull. The Italian Coast Guard said 41 people were still unaccounted for.

Early Sunday, an Italian fire brigade found a honeymooning couple from Korea still alive inside a cabin. Luca Cari, a brigade spokesman, said the couple had been taken to a local hospital to be examined. Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro, a spokesman for the coast guard, said rescuers had also made contact with an Italian man trapped inside the ship.

The coast guard is also monitoring the environmental impact of the accident, but as of Sunday morning, no oil had seeped into the ocean from the ship. “We are optimistic and hope that the ship is not going to slide further down,” Commander Nicastro told reporters. “But the weather conditions are slowly worsening, and that is a cause of concern.”There were conflicting reports about whether the ship was off course in reef-filled waters just miles from the shore or whether an electrical failure had caused the crew to lose control. Passengers spoke of faulty evacuation procedures and unprepared staff who told them nothing was wrong — until the ship began tipping over.

After questioning him for several hours, the Italian police detained the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, and the first officer, for questioning on charges of manslaughter, failure to offer assistance and abandonment of ship, the police said.

Before his detention, Captain Schettino told Italian television that the ship had hit a reef that was not on its navigation charts.

Gianni Onorato, the president of the Costa cruise company, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise lines, said the ship had been sailing its “regularly scheduled itinerary” from Civitavecchia to Savona, Italy, when it struck “a submerged rock.”

He said Captain Schettino “immediately understood the severity of the situation” and “performed a maneuver intended to protect both guests and crew.”

The Italian coast guard said the captain had tried to turn the ship toward port in Giglio to make an evacuation easier, but it began to tip over as it reached the port.