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10 years later, Costa Concordia survivors share their stories from doomed cruise ship

Ten years after the deadly Costa Concordia cruise line disaster in Italy, survivors still vividly remember scenes of chaos they say were like something straight out of the movie "Titanic."

NBC News correspondent Kelly Cobiella caught up with a group of survivors on TODAY Wednesday, a decade after they escaped a maritime disaster that claimed the lives of 32 people. The Italian cruise ship ran aground off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after striking an underground rock and capsizing.

"I think it’s the panic, the feeling of panic, is what’s carried through over 10 years," Ian Donoff, who was on the cruise with his wife Janice for their honeymoon, told Cobiella. "And it’s just as strong now."

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were on board when the ship crashed into rocks in the dark in the Mediterranean Sea, sending seawater rushing into the vessel as people scrambled for their lives.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had been performing a sail-past salute of Giglio when he steered the ship too close to the island and hit the jagged reef, opening a 230-foot gash in the side of the cruise liner.

Passengers struggled to escape in the darkness, clambering to get to the life boats. Alaska resident Nate Lukes was with his wife, Cary, and their four daughters aboard the ship and remembers the chaos that ensued as the ship started to sink.

"There was really a melee there is the best way to describe it," he told Cobiella. "It's very similar to the movie 'Titanic.' People were jumping onto the top of the lifeboats and pushing down women and children to try to get to them."

The lifeboats wouldn't drop down because the ship was tilted on its side, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the side of the ship for hours in the cold. People were left to clamber down a rope ladder over a distance equivalent to 11 stories.

"Everybody was rushing for the lifeboats," Nate Lukes said. "I felt like (my daughters) were going to get trampled, and putting my arms around them and just holding them together and letting the sea of people go by us."

Schettino was convicted of multiple manslaughter as well as abandoning ship after leaving before all the passengers had reached safety. He is now serving a 16-year prison sentence .

It took nearly two years for the damaged ship to be raised from its side before it was towed away to be scrapped.

The calamity caused changes in the cruise industry like carrying more lifejackets and holding emergency drills before leaving port.

A decade after that harrowing night, the survivors are grateful to have made it out alive. None of the survivors who spoke with Cobiella have been on a cruise since that day.

"I said that if we survive this, then our marriage will have to survive forever," Ian Donoff said.

Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here! ) that brings the day's news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and a daily delight right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else. 

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Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino guilty of manslaughter

Skipper of cruise ship that sank off coast of Italy in 2012 killing 32 people has been sentenced to total of 16 years in jail

The captain of the Costa Concordia , the cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy in 2012 killing 32 people, has been found guilty of manslaughter.

It was the most serious charge facing Francesco Schettino , who was sentenced to 16 years in jail – 10 years less than prosecutors had sought.

The disgraced commander, who was dubbed “Captain Coward” after it emerged that he abandoned the sinking ship even as hundreds of panicking passengers awaited rescue, was not present for the reading of the verdict by a panel of three judges.

He was also found guilty of causing the wreck and of deserting his post, but he escaped immediate arrest and will remain free pending his appeal.

It could take years for the man that prosecutors called a “reckless idiot” to begin serving his sentence, if ever, given Italy’s notoriously lengthy appeal process.

The ruling came just hours after Schettino made a tearful final plea for leniency, telling the court that he had “partly died” on the day of the wreck. “All the responsibility has been loaded on to me with no respect for the truth,” he said.

Victims of the disaster celebrated the verdict, a lawyer representing them said. “All of our clients suffered a horrendous ordeal which some may never truly overcome. The trauma they have been through has left some of them needing specialist therapy and counselling to come to terms with what happened and enable them to begin to move on with their lives,” Philip Banks, a personal injury lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said in a statement.

The Costa Concordia , which was owned by the Carnival Corporation, was abandoned for more than two years in the Mediterranean. Its removal to Genoa, where it is now being scrapped, was the most expensive maritime salvage operation in history.

While Schettino repeatedly suggested that he was unfairly singled out for blame in a disaster where many elements, including faulty equipment, played a role, prosectors strenuously objected, saying he alone bore the responsibility for the fatalities that night.

On the charge of manslaughter – the most serious one against him – the case turned not on the accident itself, but on Schettino’s decision to delay the order of evacuation for more than an hour.

Lawyers for the state said every passenger and crew member on board could have survived if Schettino had immediately ordered an evacuation. Instead, over months of testimony, the court heard how the captain initially told passengers and officials on land that the ship, which went dark after the crash, had a power outage and was not in peril.

The youngest victim of the tragedy was a five-year-old girl, who drowned with her father after falling through a hole in the boat. The pair had been turned away from one lifeboat for lack of space and were heading to the other side of the ship to try to embark on another.

The ship ran aground just 15 minutes after Schettino ordered a risky pass by the Tuscan island of Giglio. The captain denied he made the order to impress his lover at the time, a Moldovan dancer who was with him on the ship’s bridge and who was forced to admit in court that she had been having an affair with him.

It was Schettino’s decision to abandon his post before all the passengers were evacuated and seek safety on board a lifeboat that most enraged Italians after the disaster. While Schettino insisted in court that he had slipped and fallen into the safety of the lifeboat, that claim was thoroughly discredited by prosecutors.

Schettino suggested some good had come out of the disaster, pointing out that cruise liners now faced tougher regulations and gave more training to officers.The verdict was announced in the local Grosseto theatre, a venue that was used instead of a normal court room in order to accommodate the throngs of journalists covering the trial. The judges in the case deliberated in the theatre’s dressing rooms.

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The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

By: Becky Little

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: June 23, 2021

Many famous naval disasters happen far out at sea, but on January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia wrecked just off the coast of an Italian island in relatively shallow water. The avoidable disaster killed 32 people and seriously injured many others, and left investigators wondering: Why was the luxury cruise ship sailing so close to the shore in the first place?

During the ensuing trial, prosecutors came up with a tabloid-ready explanation : The married ship captain had sailed it so close to the island to impress a much younger Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

Whether or not Captain Francesco Schettino was trying to impress his girlfriend is debatable. (Schettino insisted the ship sailed close to shore to salute other mariners and give passengers a good view.) But whatever the reason for getting too close, the Italian courts found the captain, four crew members and one official from the ship’s company, Costa Crociere (part of Carnival Corporation), to be at fault for causing the disaster and preventing a safe evacuation. The wreck was not the fault of unexpected weather or ship malfunction—it was a disaster caused entirely by a series of human errors.

“At any time when you have an incident similar to Concordia, there is never…a single causal factor,” says Brad Schoenwald, a senior marine inspector at the United States Coast Guard. “It is generally a sequence of events, things that line up in a bad way that ultimately create that incident.”

Wrecking Near the Shore

The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. 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 impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger.

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. Some consider them to be dangerous deviations from planned routes. 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).”

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. 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 Evacuation

Evidence 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. 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.

“I have made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding,” Schettino told Ferrarini while the ship was sinking. “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.)

Schettino also didn’t immediately alert the Italian Search and Rescue Authority about the accident. The impact on the Scole Rocks occurred at about 9:45 p.m. local time, and the first person to contact rescue officials about the ship was someone on the shore, according to the investigative report. 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.

A little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats. Evacuation was made even more chaotic by the ship listing so far to starboard, making walking inside very difficult and lowering the lifeboats on one side, near to impossible. Making things worse, the crew had dropped the anchor incorrectly, causing the ship to flop over even more dramatically.

Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it!” —a recorded sound bite that turned into a T-shirt slogan in Italy.

Schettino argued that he fell into a lifeboat because of how the ship was listing to one side, but this argument proved unconvincing. In 2015, a court found Schettino guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship before passengers and crew were evacuated and lying to authorities about the disaster. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In addition to Schettino, Ferrarini and Rusli Bin, the other people who received convictions for their role in the disaster were Cabin Service Director Manrico Giampedroni, First Officer Ciro Ambrosio and Third Officer Silvia Coronica.

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Ten years on, Costa Concordia continues to haunt survivors and islanders: A look back at the cruise ship disaster

In what many call as the modern Titanic, a massive luxury liner ran aground off Italy’s Giglio island and toppled over into freezing waters on 13 January 2012, killing 32 people

In what is dubbed as modern-day ‘Titanic’, ten years ago, on 13 January 2012, Costa Concordia, a vast, luxury liner, had run aground off Italy’s Giglio island and toppled over into freezing waters, in a disaster that left 32 people dead.

The liner, carrying 4,229 people from 70 countries, ran aground while many passengers were at dinner.

As Italy marks the 10th anniversary of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil, we take a look at what happened that fateful day and what were the consequences of such a tragedy.

What happened then?

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were on board when the ship crashed into rocks in the dark in the Mediterranean Sea, sending seawater rushing into the vessel as people scrambled for their lives.

The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, had been performing a sail-past salute of Giglio when he steered the ship too close to the island and hit the jagged reef, opening a 230-foot gash in the side of the cruise liner.

Passengers struggled to escape in the darkness, clambering to get to the lifeboats.

Alaska resident Nate Lukes, who was on board with his wife and four daughters, recounting the horror was quoted as telling The Today Show _, “There was really a melee… that is the best way to describe it. It’s very similar to the movie ‘Titanic.’ People were jumping onto the top of the lifeboats and pushing down women and children to try to get to them.”_

Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias told the Associated Press , “I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice. We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Passenger Ester Percossi recalled being thrown to the ground in the dining room by the initial impact of the reef gashing into the hull, which she said felt “like an earthquake.” The lights went out, and bottles, glasses and plates flew off the tables and onto the floor.

“We got up and with great effort went out on the deck and there we got the life vests, those that we could find, because everyone was grabbing them from each other, to save themselves," she recalled. “There was no law. Just survival and that is it.”

Captain arrested

After initial investigations into the incident, Prosecutor Francesco Verusio confirmed passenger allegations that Schettino abandoned the Concordia before all the passengers and crew had been evacuated.

In 2013, Schettino went on trial for manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing the shipwreck. Two years later in February, the court in Grosseto found him guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in prison for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the vessel before passengers and crew had been evacuated, as well as for giving false information about the gravity of the collision.

His final appeal in 2017 was rejected and he is now serving his sentence at Rome’s Rebibbia prison.

Indian connection

The Costa Concordia tragedy hit home after it was revealed that 32-year-old Russel Rebello, hailing from Naigaon, near Mumbai, was working on the ship as a 32-year-old waiter.

Kevin, his brother, was quoted as saying about that night to AFP , “He had been ill that night. He was in his cabin when it flooded with water. He rushed out barefoot in shorts and met a friend who lent him clothes… He helped people into lifeboats. He was still helping them when the ship tilted over sharply, and people fell into the water. No-one saw him after that.”

On 3 November 2014, his body was finally retrieved from the waters by the crews dismantling the vessel for scrap in Genoa.

Marking the tragedy

A noon Mass will be held at Giglio’s church to honour the 32 people who died in the shipwreck, while survivors and relatives of the dead will place a wreath in the water where the hulking liner finally came to rest on its side off Giglio’s coast.

With inputs from agencies

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The tenth anniversary of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster that killed 32 people after it capsized and sank off shore, at Giglio island, Italy.

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Italy marks 12 years since Costa Concordia disaster

Costa concordia ran aground off west coast of italy on 13 january 2012 ..

Italy marks 12 years since the Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio , resulting in 32 deaths, in one of the worst maritime disasters in modern Italian history.

The accident occurred in calm seas on the night of 13 January 2012 when the luxury liner carrying 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew deviated from its planned route during a seven-day Mediterranean cruise.

Captained by Francesco Schettino, the Costa Concordia was making its way between the port of Civitavecchia, 60km north of Rome, and Savona in Italy's northern Liguria region, when disaster struck .

Giglio sail-past salute

In an act of bravado, Schettino steered the 292m-long vessel towards the shore to "salute" Giglio, a small island off Italy's west coast, running the ship aground on jagged rocks in shallow waters at around 21.45.

The impact caused a 53-m long gash in the port-side hull, along five compartments, including the engine room.

The 114,500-ton cruise liner soon began taking on water, resulting in a loss of power, propulsion and electrical systems. The rudder was also out of action, meaning the ship could not be steered.

A frantic passenger contacted her daughter on the mainland, and at about 22.15 the Italian coast guard telephoned Schettino, who downplayed the situation, noting only that there was a blackout aboard.

Francesco Schettino

When the coast guard called back 10 minutes later the crew admitted that the ship was taking on water, with Schettino requesting tugboats.

The first rescue boat arrived at 22.39 and a chaotic evacuation operation ensued.

Some passengers said that the signal to deploy the lifeboats and abandon ship was not given until nearly 23.00.

Abandoning ship

Schettino left the bridge at around 23.20 and shortly afterwards he abandoned ship.He would subsequently claim that he slipped off the Concordia and landed in a lifeboat.

The rescue effort was also reportedly hampered by the fact that some 600 passengers had not received evacuation drills and a large part of the crew did not speak Italian.

• One year anniversary of Costa Concordia disaster

The last crew member left the bridge about 15 minutes after Schettino, even though there were still roughly 300 people still on the ship.

By midnight the Concordia was listing severely, compromising the release of lifeboats and forcing many to escape by clambering down rope ladders over a distance equivalent to 11 stories.

Gregorio de Falco

At 12.40 an enraged coast guard captain, Gregorio de Falco, telephoned Schettino, who was in a lifeboat with other Concordia officers, ordering him repeatedly to return to his ship and oversee the evacuation.

Frustrated with Schettino's excuses, de Falco shouted down the phone: " Vada a bordo, cazzo! " (Get on board, for fuck's sake!).

Schettino refused.

Search for survivors

That day, 14 January, divers rescued the last three survivors trapped inside the Concordia.Over the following two weeks rescue divers searched the ship for missing people and recovered most of the bodies.

• At least 29 still missing in Costa Concordia shipwreck

The body of the last missing person, an Indian crew member, was not recovered until 3 November 2014.

“Captain Coward”

After the accident Schettino was vilified in the Italian media, referred to as “Captain Coward”, “Captain Calamity” and even “Italy's most hated man”.

In 2015 he was convicted of manslaughter and causing the shipwreck, and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

• Italy court upholds 16-year sentence for Costa Concordia captain Schettino

Salvage operation

The ship wreck was the subject of a complex and unprecedented salvage operation , during which a Spanish diver lost his life, bringing the total death toll from the disaster to 33.

• Costa Concordia being refloated

The ship made its final voyage in July 2014 when it was successfully towed away from Giglio and taken to Genoa , where it was dismantled for scrap in an operation completed three years later, in July 2017.

The Costa Concordia wreck recovery was one of the most expensive in history (about $2 billion), costing more than three times the vessel’s building cost in 2004 (about $612 million).

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Published: January 14, 2012

Where the italian cruise ship ran aground.

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Italian Cruise Ship Runs Aground

An enormous cruise ship is lying on its side in the Mediterranean this morning. The Italian ship, Costa Concordia ran aground off Italy's Tuscan Coast, killing at least three people while dozens yet to be found.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News, I'm Scott Simon. An enormous cruise ship is lying on its side in the Mediterranean today. The Italian ship, Costa Concordia, ran aground off Italy's Tuscan coast, killing at least three people. Passengers described scenes reminiscent of the Titanic. Fabio Costa was working in a shop on the cruise liner when he felt a jolt.

FABIO COSTA: Everything just started to fall. All the glasses broke. We could only see that the boat had hit something. We had no idea how serious it was until we got out and we looked through the window and we saw the water coming closer and closer. Everything happened really, really fast.

SIMON: He said people began to panic, pushing and shoving.

COSTA: A lot of people was falling down the stairs and they were hurt because things fell on them, and people, when they had to get on the ship, on the boat, the lifeboats, everybody was pushing each other...

SIMON: People grew frustrated waiting for lifeboats, he said, and some took their chances and jumped into the sea. Search and rescue operations continue with almost 70 people unaccounted for. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli is with us from Porto Santo Stefano. Sylvia, how would you describe the scene there?

SYLVIA POGGIOLI BYLINE: Well, here I'm in a school, an elementary school, that has been set as a sort of emergency center. Many of the passengers and crew were brought here; not all, some were taken - there's a lot of confusion, a lot of chaotic - lack of organization here. Some passengers have been evacuated to other towns. But most are here in Porto Santo Stefano. They are huddling in corners and then some of them are being taken to other hotels further away from this town.

I've spoken to several people. I've heard similar accounts of what you've just played. A French woman told me that it was so - the ship started listing so fast that it was too difficult to lower all the lifeboats. So many fishermen from the island very nearby, a few hundred yards from where the ship ran aground, came out with their own boats and they lowered themselves down with a rope ladder down the side of the boat.

The women - as you said, it was dinnertime. They were dressing in evening clothes and many of them, of course, had to take off their high-heel shoes. And they arrived here freezing cold. The local townsfolk here in Porto Santo Stefano came out in full force, bringing food, blankets and everything. But what is very surprising is the total lack of organization. There's nobody really seriously here in control to give us a sense of exactly what's happened. There are people who don't know where their husbands, their wives, their fathers have ended up, and there's a great deal of tension, and it's very sad.

SIMON: Sylvia, is it known what happened to the ship? How did it run aground?

BYLINE: This is a very mysterious thing. I know this part of the sea myself. I've been here many times. The stretch of sea between the island of Giulio and the mainland is almost like a highway of the sea. Everyday three, four - these big cruise ships go up and down. This is not a dangerous stretch of water. I talked to a fisherman who knows these waters very well. He says it's mysterious; must have been human error because what happened is, the ship must have gone too close to the shore of the island of Giulio and it hit rocks under the surface of the water, and left a gash, 150-foot gash in the ship. The sea was calm, there was no current. It will be up to investigators to determine exactly what happened.

SIMON: And what happens to the evacuees who are beginning to accumulate there?

BYLINE: Well, buses have been taking some of them to other towns where there are more hotels, there are better facilities. So many people unfortunately, you know, there was panic, and they left everything on the boat, the ship. They left their wallets, their credit cards, their clothes. They are without papers. And so we are unable to speak to anybody from the ship and the Costa Shipping Company is not talking to the reporters. So we don't know exactly what they're doing, but they're taking them to other cities in Italy.

SIMON: Sylvia, is the ship in danger of sinking?

BYLINE: Well, it certainly looks - if you've seen the pictures, it is lying flat on its side, very, very close to the shore of the island. Giulio and - I think that is another - because it's a huge boat. It was carrying some 4,200 people; 3,200 passengers, 1,000 crew. It's a big, big boat.

SIMON: NPR's Sylvia Poggioli. Thanks so much.

BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.

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Luxury cruise ship aground off Italy; 3 dead

January 14, 2012 / 10:04 AM EST / AP

Last Updated 10:03 a.m. ET

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy — Survivors from a luxury cruise ship that ran aground and tipped over, leaving at least three dead and 69 people still unaccounted for, described Saturday a chaotic evacuation, as plates and glasses crashed and they crawled along upended hallways trying to reach safety.

Three bodies were recovered from the sea after the Costa Concordia ran aground off the tiny island of Giglio near the coast of Tuscany late Friday, tearing a 160-foot gash in its hull and sending in a rush of water.

The ANSA news agency quoting the prefect's office in the province of Grosseto as saying that authorities have accounted for 4,165 of the 4,234 people who had boarded the liner.

By morning Saturday, the ship was lying virtually flat off Gigio's coast, its starboard side submerged in the water and the huge gash showing clearly on its upturned hull.

Passengers described a scene reminiscent of "Titanic," complaining the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many of them to be released.

Helicopters plucked to safety some people who were trapped on the ship, some survivors were rescued by boats in the area, and witnesses said some people jumped from the ship into the dark, cold sea. Coast guard rescuers were continuing to search the ship for passengers.

Authorities still hadn't counted all the survivors by the time they reached mainland 12 hours later.

The evacuation drill was only scheduled for Saturday afternoon, even though some passengers had already been on board for several days.

"It was so unorganized, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5 p.m.," said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. "We had joked 'What if something had happened today?"'

"Have you seen 'Titanic'? That's exactly what it was," said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean. They all bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along nearly vertical hallways and stairwells, trying to reach rescue boats.

"We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing," her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61, said. "We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls."

She choked up as she recounted the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship lurched to the side and the family found themselves standing on a wall. "He said 'take my baby,'" Mrs. Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand as she teared up. "I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn't want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn't hold her.

"I thought that was the end and I thought they should be with their baby," she said.

"I wonder where they are," daughter Valerie whispered.

The family said they were some of the last off the ship, forced to shimmy along a rope down the exposed side of the ship to a waiting rescue vessel below.

Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbor of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio. She was wearing elegant dinner clothes — a gray cashmere sweater, a silk scarf — along with a large pair of hiking boots, which a kind islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape. Left behind in her cabin were her passport, credit cards and phone.

Hammer, 65, told The Associated Press that she was eating her first course, an appetizer of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad, on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise, which was a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.

Suddenly, "We heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn't anything dangerous," she said.

Several passengers concurred, saying crew members for a good 45 minutes told passengers there was a simple "technical problem" that had caused the lights to go off. Seasoned cruisers, however, knew better and went to get their life jackets from their cabins and report to their "muster stations," the emergency stations each passenger is assigned to, they said.

Once there, though, crew members delayed lowering the lifeboats even thought the ship was listing badly, they said.

"We had to scream at the controllers to release the boats from the side," said Mike van Dijk, a 54-year-old from Pretoria, South Africa. "We were standing in the corridors and they weren't allowing us to get onto the boats. It was a scramble, an absolute scramble."

Passengers Alan and Laurie Willits from Wingham, Ontario, celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, said they were watching the magic show in the ship's main theater when they felt an inital lurch, as if from a severe steering maneuver, followed a few seconds later by a "shudder" that tipped trash cans over. The subsequent listing of the ship made the theater curtains seem like they were standing on their side.

"And then the magician disappeared," Laurie Willits said, saying the magician left the stage and panicked audience members fled for their cabins as well.

Once at their life boat station, crew members directed passengers to go upstairs from the fourth floor deck; Alan Willits said he refused.

"I said, 'No, this isn't right.' And I came out and I argued 'When you get this boat stabilized, I'll go up to the fifth floor then,'" he said. Eventually, his lifeboat was lowered down.

But things didn't improve for passengers once aboard the lifeboats or on land.

"No one counted us, neither in the life boats nor on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French military officer from Marseille. She said there had been no evacuation drill since she boarded in Marseille, France on Jan. 8.

As dawn neared, a painstaking search of the 290-meter (950-foot) long ship's interior was being conducted to see if anyone might have been trapped inside, Paolillo said.

"There are some 2,000 cabins, and the ship isn't straight," Paolillo said, referring to the Concordia's dramatic more than 45-degree tilt. "I'll leave it to your imagination to understand how they (the rescuers) are working as they move through it."

Some Concordia crew members were still aboard to help the coast guard rescuers, he said.

Paolillo said it wasn't immediately known if the dead were passengers or crew, nor were the nationalities of the victims immediately known. It wasn't clear how they died.

Some 30 people were reported injured, most of them suffering only bruises, but at least two people were reported in grave condition. Several passengers came off the ferries on stretchers, but it appeared more out of exhaustion and shock than serious injury.

Some passengers, apparently in panic, had jumped off the boat into the sea, witnesses said. Authorities were trying to obtain a full passenger and crew list from Costa, so they could do a roll call to determine who might be missing.

The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on the tiny island of Giglio, a popular vacation isle about 18 miles (25 kilometers) off Italy's central west coast. Those evacuated the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.

Passengers sat dazed in a middle school opened for them, wrapped in wool or aluminum blankets, with some wearing their life preservers and their shoeless feet covered with aluminum foil. Civil protection crews served them warm tea and bread, but confusion reigned supreme as passengers tried desperately to find the right bus to begin their journey home.

Tanja Berto, from Ebenfurth, Austria, was shuttled from one line to another with her mother and 2-year-old son Bruno, trying to figure out how to get back to Savona, where they began their cruise a week ago.

"It's his birthday today," she said of her son, rolling her eyes as she held Bruno and tended to her mother, who had grown faint and was lying on the ground. "Happy birthday, Bruno."

Survivors far outnumbered Giglio's 1,500 residents, and island Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an appeal for islanders — "anyone with a roof" — to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.

Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia, en route to its first port of call, Savona, in northwestern Italy.

The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" — it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio — "ripping a gash 50 meters (160 feet) across" in the side of the ship, and started taking on water.

The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier. But after the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said.

Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, were taking turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to safely. A coast guard member was airlifted aboard the vessel to help people get aboard a small basket so they could be hoisted up to the helicopter, said Capt. Cosimo Nicastro, another Coast Guard official.

Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.

It said about 1,000 Italian passengers were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.

The Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters, ANSA reported. In 2008, when strong winds buffeted Palermo, the cruise ship banged against the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered damage but no one was injured, ANSA said.

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First Video and Images of the Cruise Ship Sinking In Italy Remind Me of the Titanic (Updated)

The 984-foot-long cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground on the island of Giglio, Italy, killing at least three people. More than 4,000 people have been evacuated, but 50 are still missing. The night photos remind me of the sinking Titanic.

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The accident didn't involve an iceberg, but it sounds pretty similar: passengers heard a loud crash sound during dinner. At first, the captain told them that the ship had an electrical problem but the evacuation started almost immediately after that, as they were ordered to put on their life jackets and walk to their emergency rafts.

The situation worsened quickly. Officials said the evacuation became extremely difficult as the ship sunk and the inclination increased dramatically. According to Giuseppe Linardi—prefect of the city of Grosseto, in the Tuscany region—many panicking passengers jumped into the sea as the Costa Concordia started to quickly lean to the side. About 150 of those have already been rescued.

Talking to local media, a passenger described the scene: "it was a nightmare, if felt like the Titanic, we thought we were going to die [...] people shouting and kids crying in the middle of the most absolute darkness."

One of the passengers was journalist Mara Parmegiani, who also described the situation referring to the Titanic. She said that some of the life jackets and the emergency lights weren't working. In addition to that, "there were problems deploying some of the evacuation boats, to the point in which [her] boat's pilot had to be substituted." Apparently, the crew wasn't completely prepared to take care of the situation.

Some passengers said the evacuation was really slow, taking an hour and a half between the impact and the time they left the ship. They pointed out that some of the crew members told them that the captain knew the situation was grave, but he didn't act accordingly.

4,179 people have been accounted, 14 of them injured. There were a total of 4,229 registered passengers and crew members in the ship, which was cruising through the Mediterranean. According to the manufacturer, the Costa Concordia can hold 3,780 passengers and 1,100 crew members. The city prefect says they are searching frantically for the missing people.

Ennio Aquilino, chief of firefighting services of the city of Grosetto, says that the hull is breached on both sides. The ship owners, the Italian company Costa Crociere, says they don't know yet what was the cause of the accident.

I just can't believe this has happened on a calm sea, in this age of GPS and digital cartographies. [ Russia Today , BBC News , El Mundo , Fox News ]

Update: The ship's captain—who left the ship two hours after the accident—has been arrested by the Italian police under charges of involuntary manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship. According to Grosseto's chief prosecutor, Francesco Verusio, "the captain approximated Giglio clumsily, hitting a rock on its left side, making the ship to lean, which caused a large amount of water to enter the hull in just two or three minutes." [ El Mundo ]

The arrested captain and his sinking ship.

A dramatic shot at night, just as the ship started to sink.

A closer shot at night.

A view of the ship from the island of Giglio.

Aerial view.

Closer view from above.

The island of Giglio, Italy, where the ship ran aground.

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Twelve Canadians on board Italian cruise ship that ran aground

Consular officials are in touch with the 12 Canadian passengers on board the luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany late Friday night, claiming the lives of three and leaving 41 unaccounted for, the Foreign Affairs Department confirmed Saturday

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By Thandi Fletcher

Consular officials are in touch with the 12 Canadian passengers on board the luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany late Friday night, claiming the lives of three and leaving 41 unaccounted for, the Foreign Affairs Department confirmed Saturday.

Claude Rochon, a foreign affairs spokeswoman, told Postmedia News that the department is aware of the incident and that Canadian consular officials in Italy were working with Italian authorities to gather more information.

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Rochon could not say whether any of the 12 Canadian passengers suffered injuries.

“To protect the privacy of the individuals concerned, no further details can be released,” she wrote in an email. “Canadian consular officials are providing consular assistance as needed.”

At about 10 p.m. on Friday, the Costa Concordia luxury cruise ship was touring the Mediterranean when it “struck rock” off the coast of Isola del Giglio in Italy, the ship’s operator Costa Cruise confirmed in a statement on Saturday.

The ship “sustained significant damage” and when it began to severely keel over, “the order was given to abandon ship and deploy the lifeboats,” the company stated.

On Saturday, three people were confirmed dead and at least 40 people were missing, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.

Earlier in the day, news reports said there were 70 passengers unaccounted for, but as officials confirmed the number of people safely on the shore, the number of missing had been lowered, according to AFP.

Giuseppe Linardi, the governor of Grossetto, a city in Tuscany, told AFP that rescue workers were still trying to locate 41 people. Three were found dead, he confirmed.

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“Checks are continuing, it is a fairly lengthy task that will go on into the night,” he said. “Of the 4,232 people on board, 4,191 have been found so far.”

On Saturday, the ship’s captain was arrested and arrested, AFP reported.

According to news reports, two Canadians on the ship were Wingham, Ont., couple Alan and Laurie Willits. The couple made it to safety on dry land.

Laurie told CNN that she and her husband were watching a magic show at the time of the collision.

“All of a sudden, the lights flashed and the boat tipped like it was turning, but it didn’t return to level,” Laurie told CNN, describing the moment the ship ran aground. “And then we heard a scraping noise to the left of the ship and my husband said ‘we’re sliding off our seats . . . something’s wrong. And the magician disappeared, that was the funny part.”

Amid the panic, Laurie told CNN that she and her husband hurried to their cabin to grab their coats and life jackets.

“We knew we had to get out of there. We knew it was something serious. We grabbed our coats, that was it — none of our valuables, none of our important papers.”

As the ship began to lean to one side, Laurie said she heard the horrific sounds of crying children and screams fill the air as frigid ocean water gushed onto the ship.

The two eventually managed to get into a lifeboat, Laurie said, about an hour to 90 minutes after the emergency alarm was raised.

Once on dry land, the two watched from a pier on the island as the ship slowly keeled over until it was at an almost 90-degree angle in the water, CNN reported.

Earlier Saturday, other news reports pegged the death toll at up to six people. Linardi explained that difficulties in the rescue had led to confusion over the official death toll, which was put at six, earlier. He added that he believed 52 of the passengers on board the ship where children.

The survivors were taken to the small port of Santo Stefano near the scene of the accident, AFP reported.

Carnival Corporation, the operator of the cruise ship, released a statement on Saturday.

“This is a terrible tragedy and we are deeply saddened,” the company wrote. “Carnival Corporation . . . offers our sympathies and heartfelt condolences to all of the Costa Concordia guests, crew members and their families.”

The company wrote that they are co-operating fully with authorities and “working to fully understand the cause of what occurred.”

“The safety of our guests and crew members remains the No. 1 priority of Carnival Corporation . . . and all of our cruise lines.”

The ship was sailing from Rome with scheduled stops in Savona, Italy, Marseille, France, Barcelona, Spain, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo, Italy.

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