Twenty-nine still missing from stricken cruise ship
As emergency crews continued to search for 29 people still missing from the stricken cruise ship Costa Concordia, fears of an environmental disaster off the Italian west coast are growing.
Italy says it will declare a state of emergency over the incident, and provide funding to help avert any environmental disaster caused by leaking fuel.
Six people are known to have died after the ship, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, smashed into rocks off Giglo Island.
The ship’s owners have blamed the captain for Friday’s crash, saying he changed course towards an island.
In a media conference, Costa Cruises boss Pier Luigi Foschi said,
“This route was put in correctly. The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a manoeuvre by the commander that was unapproved.â€
Evidence for this is supported by shipping newspaper Lloyd’s
List which said it had been able to trace the course of the Concordia though information from satellites.
The paper issued a graphic comparing Friday’s sailing with an earlier sailing by the liner, suggesting that Friday’s route had deviated far from its usual course.
Captain Francesco Schettino has denied wrongdoing and says the rocks were not on his charts. He has insisted that he and his crew were the last people to leave the stricken vessel.
Costa cruises said it was “unable to ascertain†whether the captain left the ship before completion of the two-hour evacuation. “We will have to wait for the formal investigation by the prosecutor’s office,†Foschi said.
The missing are thought to include four crew members, as well as passengers from the US, Germany, France and Italy.
The vessel had just left the port of Civitavecchia, north of Rome, carrying roughly 2,300 tonnes of fuel for a weeklong Mediterranean cruise.
Ian Jarrett
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