Costa maya bus accident trial#

Search and Rescue contacted the ship a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., but Schettino didn’t tell them what had happened for about 20 more minutes.Ī little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. local time, and the first person to contact rescue officials about the ship was someone on the shore, according to the investigative report. The impact on the Scole Rocks occurred at about 9:45 p.m.

Schettino also didn’t immediately alert the Italian Search and Rescue Authority about the accident. “What should I say to the media?… To the port authorities I have said that we had…a blackout.” (Ferrarini was later convicted for contributing to the disaster by delaying rescue operations.) “I have made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding,” Schettino told Ferrarini while the ship was sinking. The impact and water leakage caused an electrical blackout on the ship, and a recorded phone call with Costa Crociere’s crisis coordinator, Roberto Ferrarini, shows he tried to downplay and cover up his actions by saying the blackout was what actually caused the accident.

Costa maya bus accident trial#

The Italian captain went back onboard the wreck for the first time since the sinking of the cruise ship on January 13, 2012, as part of his trial for manslaughter and abandoning ship.Įvidence introduced in Schettino’s trial suggests that the safety of his passengers and crew wasn’t his number one priority as he assessed the damage to the Concordia. However, an Italian naval admiral testified in court that even though the helmsman was late in executing the captain’s orders, “the crash would’ve happened anyway.” (The helmsman was one of the four crew members convicted in court for contributing to the disaster.) A Questionable Evacuationįormer captain of the Costa Concordia Francesco Schettino speaks with reporters after being aboard the ship with the team of experts inspecting the wreck on Februin Isola del Giglio, Italy. In his trial, Captain Schettino blamed the shipwreck on Helmsman Jacob Rusli Bin, who he claimed reacted incorrectly to his order and argued that if the helmsman had reacted correctly and quickly, the ship wouldn’t have wrecked. In its investigative report on the 2012 disaster, Italy’s Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports found that the Concordia “was sailing too close to the coastline, in a poorly lit shore area…at an unsafe distance at night time and at high speed (15.5 kts).”

Some consider them to be dangerous deviations from planned routes. Sailing close to shore to give passengers a nice view or salute other sailors is known as a “sail-by,” and it’s unclear how often cruise ships perform these maneuvers. The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger. But when it deviated from its planned path to sail closer to the island of Giglio, the ship struck a reef known as the Scole Rocks. The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. Technicians pass in a small boat near the stricken cruise liner Costa Concordia lying aground in front of the Isola del Giglio on Januafter hitting underwater rocks on January 13.