Eleven months after the cruise ship Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy, the ship remains on its side. “60 Minutes” sent a camera crew in that brought out never-before-seen images of the surreal site on this “60 Minutes Overtime” web exclusive.
“You’ve got this giant thing that’s three football fields long sitting on a slanted mountainside underwater,” says “60 Minutes” producer Rich Bonin, whose story on the Costa Concordia salvage project aired on the broadcast this week on the “CBS News” website. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”
“CBS News” photographers used a number of unusual photographic techniques to get the shots including a hovering drone flying miniature cameras above the ship, cameras as close to the hulking wreck as possible.
When we last visited Captain Francesco Schettino, he was being accused of several crimes as a result of the Costa Concordia grounding. He still is. But now, the Italian master of the ill-fated cruise ship says he’s innocent and that the truth will be told – in his new book.
“Soon I will reveal the shocking truth,” Schettino told Italian newspaper Il Giornale as reported by the Telegraph. “And then all those people who denigrated me will have to apologize, not to me but to the families of the victims and to the public, which was conned with false information.”
By all accounts, Costa Concordia was sailing too close to shore on January 13, 2012, when the ship grounded off the coast of Italy. However it happened, the event took the lives of 32 passengers and crew in the process.Now, Schettino, who has been accused of abandoning his ship, manslaughter and causing the shipwreck, says he is innocent and did all he could do to help. Sticking to his story that he tripped and fell into a lifeboat, the fallen 52-year-old captain is resolute in his contention.
“I will no longer accept being massacred with slanderous lies,” Schettino told Il Giornale. “I’m writing a book and I will reveal what people don’t want to come to light.”
No details are available on the book or when it will be out.
Meanwhile, salvage operations continue at the site of the grounding of Costa Concordia, now aided by the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy last January and work has been ongoing since then to clear the area of all things cruise ship related. Taking a cruise ship that has fallen over on its side and getting it back upright is apparently a gigantic job that has never before attempted. This week, Costa Cruises, along with its salvage company, launched a website with detailed information, plans and images relating to the Costa Concordia wreck-removal project.
Parbuckling is the technical term for the process of rotating the wreck into an upright position and is said to be one of the most complex and crucial phases of the removal plan. The Parbuckling Project website gives step by step illustrations that show just exactly how the salvage team hopes to make that happen.
The site’s main features include background information about the project and the companies involved, up-to-date news, multimedia assets including videos, 3-D animations and pictures, thematic insights and technical details.Just completing the initial phase, anchoring and stabilization of the wreck has been done to prevent any slipping or sinking.
The next phase of the removal plan prepares the false bottom on which the wreck will rest after rotation in two separate phases.
First grout bags will be positioned and filled with cement to create a stable base for the hull.
Next, platforms will be fixed in place and a crane will be used to install water-tight structures called caissons on one side of the wreck.
Then the parbuckling happens, lifting the ship up on one side. To balance the wreck, more caissons will be installed on the other side, refloating the ship which has been resting on the platform shown above.
Its a never-been-done feat of engineering that takes technology from a number of unrelated fields to make it happen. Costa promises that the Parbuckling Project website will be constantly updated to reflect the different phases of the plan as the work progresses.
Getting the ship out of the way can’t come soon enough for environmentalists who recently found and rescued giant mussels from under the wreck, as we see in this video.
The grounded cruise shipCosta Concordia may not be on trial itself but court proceedings began this week, looking for answers to what happened. More than 100 lawyers representing survivors and the families of passengers and crew members who died in the January event are on hand to plead their case.
The proceedings will be based on evidence from the ship’s black box recordings, navigational details and conversations recorded on the bridge of the ship. Making up part of the 270 pages of documents before the court is Captain Francesco Schettino’s testimony that his ship was not too close to the island of Gigio. Schettino maintains that he was simply following company policy to “salute” the island.
Thirty-two people died after Schettino allegedly took the ship off course and dangerously close to the Tuscan island of Giglio on the night of January 13. The ship then ran aground and capsized. Hearings this week will help decide whether to put Schettino on trial for manslaughter among other charges.
“We want to look him in the eye to see how he will react to the accusations,” German survivor Michael Liessen, 50, who was attending with his wife said in a ClarionLedger report.
When the Costa Concordia was grounded off the coast of Italy last January, a call went out to take a focused look at cruise ship safety. Since then, a number of in-depth television specials have been aired, several accounts of the tragic event have been published and maritime experts have come up with specific suggestions. While there can be no guarantee of another event of such magnitude happening ever again, what looks to be a unified cruise industry has taken steps to minimize the chance.
“The cruise industry continues to work on a global level to improve the safety of passengers and crew, which is our number one priority,” said Christine Duffy, president and CEO of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) in Travel Pulse.
Quick reality check: nice thought but no real meat there.
CLIA is a trade organization, not a governing body with legal authority granted by a nation or group of nations to impose or enforce anything. Most of their time is spent lobbying on behalf of the cruise industry, developing and implementing training and certification programs for travel agents and generally promoting the cruise industry.
There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, they do a good job doing what they do. But while new cruise industry policies address safety concerns brought up by the Costa Concordia grounding, travelers would do well to keep their eyes and ears open and be alert when traveling via cruise ship with the same diligence they might apply when traveling in the air or on land.
Still, the cruise industry has adopted every bit of the renewed sense of urgency about safety that we might expect.
“Since January of this year, and in keeping with our efforts to continuously improve operational excellence, the global cruise industry has voluntarily adopted seven wide-ranging safety policies,” added Duffy. “We remain fully committed to exploring further enhancements in a number of areas that will add to the industry’s excellent safety record.”
Previously, implemented policies for increased safety included a passage plan, much like an aircraft flight plan, to address the notion that the captain of Costa Concordia had gone off course on a whim. Access to a ship’s bridge was to be tightened up too, believing unauthorized people may have been hanging around the command center of Costa Concordia at the time of the tragic event. Cruise lines also decided to carry extra life jackets because some passengers on Costa Concordia were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were needed.
Recently, a rule was added to actually fill lifeboats with people on a periodic basis, just to be sure the crew knew what to expect and do in case of a real emergency.
The meat of the new cruise ship policy:
“To facilitate training for lifeboat operations, CLIA oceangoing members have adopted a policy that at least one lifeboat on each ship is to be filled with crew members equal in number to its certified number of occupants at least every six months. Under this policy, for safety considerations, the loading of lifeboats for training purposes is to be performed only while the boat is waterborne and the boat should be lowered and raised with only the lifeboat crew on board.”
Standardization of operational cruise industry policies among cruise lines is surely a good idea. Lessons learned from the Costa Concordia grounding are producing rules like these from CLIA that will probably save lives in the long run too. Still, smart travelers stay alert, know safety rules and protocols in place for any mode of travel they engage and act responsibly in case of emergency.