Rescuers blast holes in stricken ship off Italy
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ROME – Five more bodies were found on the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia on Tuesday as officials released a recording of the captain making excuses to a Coast Guard official who repeatedly orders him to get back to his crippled ship.
By Gregorio Borgia, AP
The cruise ship Costa Concordia remains off Italy on Tuesday. Divers exploded holes in the hull to search for missing passengers and crew.
EnlargeCloseBy Gregorio Borgia, AP
The cruise ship Costa Concordia remains off Italy on Tuesday. Divers exploded holes in the hull to search for missing passengers and crew.
display_afs_ads(afs_top_ads, "topsponsoredLinks");Divers located the latest victims, all of them adults wearing life jackets, in the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point, said Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro.
In the recording made after the ship hit rocks Friday night the official berates Capt. Francesco Schettino, who is on a lifeboat and repeatedly says he doesn"t want to return to the ship even as passengers are still being evacuated.
PHOTOS: Cruise ship runs aground off ItalyBLOG: Transcript: Captain was ordered to returnVIDEO: Holes blasted in ship"s hullThe officer tells Schettino to reboard and assess the needs of passengers.
"It is an order," the official says. "Don"t make any more excuses."
The Costa Concordia hit rocks near Giglio Island and capsized Friday night with about 4,200 people aboard after the captain made an unauthorized maneuver off Italy"s Tuscany coast.
The death toll now stands at 11. Italian naval divers on Tuesday exploded holes in the hull of the ship to speed the search for up to 24 missing people while seas were still calm. One official said there was still a "glimmer of hope" that survivors could be found.
Prosecutors prepared to question Schettino in court. He has been jailed for investigation of manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck.
In the recording, translated from Italian to English, Schettino is evasive when the Italian official orders him to oversee the rescue.
"Now you go to the bow, you climb up the emergency ladder and co-ordinate the evacuation," the official tells the captain.
"You must tell us how many people, children, women and passengers are there and the exact number of each category," he says.
"What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue? Captain, this is an order, I am the one in charge now. You have declared abandoning ship. There are already bodies," the official says.
"How many?" Schettino asks, to which the official responds: "That is for you to tell me, what are you doing? Do you want to go home?"
In an earlier call, Schettino says he and other crewmembers can"t get on board "because the rear of the ship is keeling over."
Schettino is finally heard agreeing to reboard. It is unclear whether he did.
After the ship"s tilt put many life rafts out of service, helicopters plucked to safety dozens of people still aboard, hours after Schettino was seen leaving the vessel. The captain has insisted in an interview before his jailing that he stayed with the vessel to the end.
The cruise line operator has said Schettino strayed from the ship"s authorized course into waters too close to the perilous reef. The navigational version of a "fly by" was apparently a favor to the chief waiter who is from Giglio and whose parents live on the island, local media reported.
Half an hour before disaster struck, the waiter"s sister posted an entry on her Facebook page saying she had been told the ship was "going to pass really close" and sending "a big hello to my brother."
Antonello Tievoli, 46, the head waiter of the Costa Concordia, is "tormented by a sense of guilt" over the tragedy, his family said, even though he did not ask the captain to perform the sail-by.
His father, Giuseppe Tievoli, 82, said "Antonello called me to say the ship would be passing by the island at around 9:30 and they would come and give us a whistle to say hello. It was something they often did," he said.
"The ship obviously came too close," he said. "I don"t know if Antonello asked the captain to come near, but the responsibility is always and only the captain"s."
At 9.08 p.m., the waiter"s sister Patrizia Tievoli, a teacher who also lives on Giglio, wrote on her Facebook page: "In just a little while the Concordia is going to pass really close. A big hello to my brother who will finally disembark at Savona to enjoy a bit of rest."
Hours later, after the ship capsized, she wrote: "A tragedy, a deadful tragedy. I can"t believe it"s true. I just hope I will wake up and realize that it was a nightmare. The longest night of my life."
She later posted a black and white photograph of the Titanic, dated 1912, next to one of the Concordia on its side, dated 2012.
She also passed judgment on the captain"s claim that the rocks were not marked on his nautical charts. "Not very convincing at all!" she wrote.
The Milan-based daily Corriere della Sera reported that Schettino called Antonello to the deck to say "Come to see it, Antonello, we"re right on top of Giglio!" That was moments before the crash.
In December 2010, Schettino gave an interview to the Czech newspaper Dnes, in which he said he never wanted to face a scenario like the Titantic.
"I enjoy the moments when I am faced with something unpredictable, when I can diverge a bit from standard procedures. It"s a challenge and I enjoy facing challenges," he told the newspaper. "I don"t think I would like to be in the role of the captain of the Titanic, sailing in a sea full of icebergs because they move. Shorelines and ocean channels are fixed. These days everything is much safer. It"s much easier to navigate because of modern technical instrument sand the Internet."
He also said in that same interview that security of his passengers is "paramount" for him, unlike some other colleagues he didn"t name. "Every moment I am aboard my ship it is important, but so far I have never been in a dangerous situation or a situation I haven"t been able to overcome," he said.
Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the holes blasted Tuesday will help divers enter the wreck more easily. "We are rushing against time," he said.
The divers set four microcharges above and below the surface of the water, Busonero said. Television footage showed one hole above the waterline to be less than 6 feet in diameter.
"The hope is that the ship is empty and that the people are somewhere else, or if they are inside that they found a safe place to await rescue," Coast Guard spokesman Filippo Marini told Sky TV 24.
The tragedy also has turned into a potential environmental crisis, with rough seas battering the stricken ship raising fears that fuel might leak into pristine waters off Giglio that are part of a sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales. A Dutch shipwreck salvage firm said it would take its engineers and divers two to four weeks to extract the 500,000 gallons of fuel aboard the ship.
Smit"s operations manager, Kees van Essen, said the company was confident that the fuel could safely be extracted through a system of pumps and valves that vacuum the oil out to waiting tanks.
"But there are always environmental risks in these types of operations," he told reporters.
Preliminary phases of the fuel extraction could begin as early as Wednesday if approved by Ital