The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks
first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and
its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and
then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes,
sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the
mainland.
Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the
Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit
vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The
events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but
also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived
with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years
until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.
“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always
refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who
was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore
and then collapsed onto its side in the water.
“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that
date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue
effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing
passengers from lifeboats.
The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down
in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once
again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger
safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people
across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status,
because of the risks of infection.
For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19
infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top
priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were
largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after
the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an
evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because
the ship was listing too heavily.
“I always said this will not define me, but you have no
choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We
all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other
people died.”
Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and
conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers
scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a
16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a
ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.
Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500
compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based
Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for
the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S.
and then Italian court system, they lost their case.
“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a
cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may
be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto
become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an
advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase
transparency and accountability in the industry.
Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the
anniversary.
Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest
cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated
Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry’s top priority, and that
cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.
“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the
Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It
said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime
Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based
on continuous improvement.”
For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night
run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to
coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then
the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.
Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the
115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off
its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of
the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.
“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a
beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture
that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.
It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we
realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.” -AP
Winfield reported from Rome.
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