Evacuation Reconstruction

Incident Initiation

A little over two hours of sailing, many passengers were enjoying the late dinner seating, others may have been taking in the shows, at the bars and casinos, while others were in their cabins preparing for bed.   Off duty crewmen would be similarily engaged.

Suddenly at about 9:45 PM the ship lurched to the port side violently, sending their table contents, china, crystal, utensils hurling off tables.  Their chairs sliding and perhaps tipping over.  This would have been the result of the Captain ordering, at high speed, "right full rudder", attempting to avoid the rock outcropping suddenly appearing ahead.  Applying large rudder angles when at speed, results in a very rapid and dangerous tilt to the opposite side while the ship is in it's turn.

Passengers in other parts of the ship may have fallen or have been hurled into obstructions, because of the violent movement or perhaps injured from loose furniture.

Soon thereafter, they may have been further jolted due to the ship's impact with the rock outcropping.

Within a minute or so, the ship must have lurched to the opposite side because of the Captain's reversing rudder to port.  Now, objects will be sliding to the starboard side as speed, although slowed somewhat due to the Captain's reversing engines, was still excessive enough to cause excessive tilting.

Not too soon after returning to an even keel, the lights were lost and darkness pervaded throughout the ship.  Passengers must have been totally bewildered by these cascading events.

Loss of lighting would have resulted from the flooding of the engineering spaces resulting in the loss of the main ship's service generators.

Flooding of the engineering spaces, resulting in loss of the main engines was not immediately realized by the Captain and his bridge crew.

Initial Reactions

We now have a situation in which the passengers are in the dark and in a quandary of what to do next.

Passengers have been tossed about and now, mostly are in total darkness.  What to do next?  What, if any information has been delivered over the public address system?  We do not know just when, or what was announced to the passengers.

For those in public spaces, it must have been totally bewildering, taking some time before they could realize the situation and how to proceed.

It has been related, that shortly after loss of lightening, the alarm is sounded: two long whistles and one short, informing the crew of a problem.

Emergency diesel generator sets would have been automatically activated on loss of normal power, resulting in the provision of emergency lightening in critical portions of the ship within 10-15 seconds.  The extent of lighting in passenger areas is not known, but assumed to be minimal in passage and stairways.  I would believe that passenger rooms remained darkened.

At this time, passengers and crew, alike, were unsure of the ship's plight.  It would take some time for them to gather their wits, and initiate individual response.

It seems to me that members of the crew having duties to perform in emergency situations, would have immediately proceeded to their assigned stations.  Given the immense size of the ship, this would take some time. One would believe that many would be in possession of hand held radio receivers, HTs in which to communicate.

One might believe, that survival meant proceeding to a lifeboat, but first, returning to their cabins in order to procure their lifejackets.

Passengers soon, very well might have heard, over the PA system, safety instructions, perhaps is several different languages, directing them to return to their cabins.

This starboard side picture shows the 13 starboard side lifeboats and ship's tenders cradled off Deck #4

The port side of the ship contains an identical set of boats which consist of one work boat, three shore side tenders and nine lifeboats.

Below, one also can sense the vast extent of the cabin deck cooridors, over 700 feet in length.

Deck Plans

                                                              3rd Belgia         2nd Svezia        1st Orlanda 

Consider now, in limited lightening, the mass of passengers starting to file onto the three center line stairways, and the very long narrow cooridors in the cabin decks which stretch well over two football fields in length.  With the hugh number of passengers, all moving in different dirctions in rather narrow spaces, boxed in by insufficient space, claustrophobia could be expected to take over resulting in chaos and panic.

One might also consider that not everyone was totally familiar with their way around this floating array of restaurants, bars, swimming pools, etc.

On naval vessels, in emergencies, the convention of movement is that one proceeds in directions, "aft and down to port, forward and up to starboard."  This prevents blocking the efficient movment of men to their battle stations. This convention would be immpossible to impose on these large cruise ships, and one would expect hectic traffic obstructions by those hurrying to and fro.

On reaching their individual cabins, finding their way around may have been difficult in the very limited lighting available.  Few, if any, may have been in possession of flashlights.

By the time most passengers reached their cabins, crewman having emergency assignments in the cabin spaces, may have arrived at their assigned stations and were now ready to direct passengers where and how to proceed.

Once having received directions from cabin crewman, calm may have removed some of passsengers anxiety.

                                                                6th Gran          5th  Italia           4th Grecia

                                                                Bretagne                                   Boat Deck

Some may have proceeded now to their assigned lifeboat stations on the 4th, Grecia, deck.  Here we have been told ship's crew suggested they return to their cabins and await further instructions as conditions were not that serious.

Some may have taken these instructions and returned to cabins, others may have remained at their lifeboats.

Time has not been well defined.  However, we might believe that calm and order had been mostly restored, as seems to be attested to by the pictures of passengers in their lifejackets at various lifeboat stations who appear calm and orderly.  Unfortunately, we do not know the exact time or situation onboard when these were taken.

.

                                                               9th Francia         8th Portogallo       7th Irlanda

                                                                                           Bridge Deck

Evacuation

Shortly after her grounding, the ship heeled over about 20° to the starboard.  With the command to abandon ship, the ship's Deck Department seaman began the launching of the ship's 26 boats.

As these photographs show, at least 11 of the 13 starboard side boats have been launched, we assume most are loaded with passengers, and are milling about before receiving instructions to land them ashore.

Note, that the starboard side anchor appears to have been deployed as we see anchor chain hanging from the hawsepipe.

On the port side, all but three boats appear to have been launched.

Here we see that perhaps only the number 1 and 13 boats may be still aboard, and all but two lifeboats remaining nearby.  Although, the length of time the ship remained in this state is unknown before "turning turtle,"  I have seen suggestions that she remained in this position for 30 minutes.

Ruminations

Captain Schettino arrived on the bridge when the ship was about four nautical miles from Giglio off the Tuscan coast and switched to manual navigation in order to perform a close-up "salute" to a retired captain, Mario Palombo, living on the island.

The Captain's testimony before Italian authorities describing the situation just before the accident, translated here:

SCHIUMA A PRUA (foam astearn at 21.42 while the ship is sailing at 15, 16 knots...radar was not pinging..... the order of the captain to avoid the obstacle came 40 seconds too late .............. )
Sono le 21.42. Dice Schettino: "All'improvviso vidi a prua la schiuma sulla superficie dell'acqua e capii che c'era uno scoglio che il radar non mi batteva". La Concordia, in quel momento viaggia tra i 15 e i 16 nodi e la manovra per evitare l'ostacolo è disperata. E tardiva. "Quaranta secondi di troppo". "Ordinai la virata d'emergenza a dritta".

Approaching close to land in the dark of night, at high speed, and without the aid of radar, can only be described as an act of recklessness.  One might question his sobriety at the time.

We should also question the lack of his bridge watch officers objecting to his actions.  Unfortunately, at this time we have seen no interviews with the ship's seaman and engineering personnel.

However, once realizing the danger ahead, it would seem hard to fault the Captain's subsequent actions to safely control his vessel, ultimately leading to her grounding, preventing the vessel sinking off-shore.

Shortly after turning left, he lost all propulsion, however, he was not aware of the situation in his engineering spaces which were in the process of flooding out.  I would believe that the engineering Main Control Room flooded also, as it appears he no longer had communication with the Engineering Watch Officer having to send a senior Mate below to assess the situation.

 Schettino said he made an emergency maneuver after hitting the rocks to prevent the vessel from heading out to sea and sinking.

Once he realized that he no longer commanded full control of his ship, he was in a situation called in the Navigation Rules, as a vessel not under command.

The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea define that a “vessel not under command,”  meaning a vessel which through some exceptional circumstance is unable to manoeuvre as required by these Rules and is therefore unable to keep out of the way of another vessel.

Captain Konrad's in his narrative states that once he was clear of the rocks and has suffered a loss of power, the Captain should have declared Mayday.

This would have included sounding the general alarm, transmitted over the emergency radio frequency, proceed to anchor, and set the abandon ship procedure for passengers.  However, at this point, he was still proceeding northwards at a speed of 8.2 knots, much too fast to drop the hook.

The Navigation Rules for vessels in International Waters proscribe these signals:

ANNEX IV - Distress signals

1. The following signals, used or exhibited either together or separately, indicate distress and need of assistance:
(a) a gun or other explosive signal fired at intervals of about a minute;
(b) a continuous sounding with any fog-signalling apparatus;
(c) rockets or shells, throwing red stars fired one at a time at short intervals;
(d) a signal made by radiotelegraphy or by any other signalling method consisting of the group   . . .   — — —   . . .   (SOS) in the Morse Code;
(e) a signal sent by radiotelephony consisting of the spoken word “Mayday”;
(f) the International Code Signal of distress indicated by NC;
(g) a signal consisting of a square flag having above or below it a ball or anything resembling a ball;
(h) flames on the vessel (as from a burning tar barrel, oil barrel, etc);
(i) a rocket parachute flare or a hand flare showing a red light;
(j) a smoke signal giving off orange-coloured smoke;
(k) slowly and repeatedly raising and lowering arms outstretched to each side;
(l) a distress alert by means of digital selective calling (DSC) transmitted on
(i) VHF channel 70, or
(ii) MF/HF on the frequencies 2187.5 kHz, 8414.5 kHz, 4207.5 kHz, 6312 kHz, 12577 kHz or 16804.5 kHz;
(m) a ship-to-shore distress alert transmitted by the ship’s Inmarsat or other mobile satellite service provider ship earth station;
(n) approved signals transmitted by radiocommunication systems, including survival craft radar transponders.

However, the Captain is further reported to say, "La regola d'oro: mai il mayday" (golden rule: never use "Mayday"  at least not until the sitation is truly desperate.

Shortly thereafter, he applied right rudder to head out to sea perhaps to avoid grounding at this high rate of speed.  Without propulsion he soon lost rudder control with his ship heading in a north east direction but his motion over the ground being northward.  He was thus crabbing northward loosing speed rapidly as he proceeded north due to the massive hull resistance presented.

He has been highly criticized at not loading and launching the lifeboats earlier.  However, I would not believe it prudent to try shipping lifeboats with the ship still in motion.  Although seaman man the lifeboats, I would believe their training to be with the ship in port, at rest, not in any dynamic way and perhaps not skillful in dealing with a moving mother ship.

Lifeboats dropped on the port side in the path of the ship would be liable to being overturned or crushed by the ship or the wave motion being developed, those on the starboard side on reaching water level, would be moving away from the ship making unshackling the fall lines difficult and subjecting the boat to being hauled over. Or, they could be sucked into the ships hull from the sideways motion of the ship.

I would believe launching the lifeboats with way on the ship to be unthinkable at this early time.  We furthermore, have no information on the sea state at the time.

While drifting northward, the ship was in water over 300 feet, probably too deep for anchoring.  Also, the extent of flooding was not fully understood, and the potential of sinking was apparently not considered imminent.

A little over a mile north of grazing the outcropping, speed over the ground had decreased to the point where the Captain appears to have activated his port bow thruster enabling the ship to reverse it's movement north, turning southward where the current set the ship heading in towards the island.

Not heading inland would have resulted with the ship continuing seaward, not a prudent action knowing that the ship was holed and progress of internal flooding unknown.

Ultimately, the ship grounded with a list to starboard of about 20°.  At this time, the Captain was said to have commanded abandon ship.

Abandon ship procedures were instituted.  What transpired thereafter has not been well understood with much misunderstanding portrayed by the press of ineptitude of the crew.  The interval of time before the ship heeled over completely to starboard has not be established, to my knowledge.

The bottom line however, is that we now know that there were 3,216 passengers and 1,013 crew members aboard the COSTA CONCORDIA for a total of 4,229 souls. As this is written 13 bodies have been recovered while another 19 are missing and presumed lost. "Considering the circumstances it seems amazing that more lives were not lost in the darkness and confusion of the capsizing ship."

Over 99% of the souls aboard survived.  I believe the much maligned ship's crew has to be credited with this remarkable statistic.

Here are a few pictures taken during evacuation process, have no idea of times.

Listing 10°  Passengers to the left appear to be shoe horning themselves into a lifeboat.

Listing 16°

Starboard side boat station #27, believe we're looking forward.  

The Staff Captain and his Security Officer may have begun the evacuation process prior to the abandon ship command.

Midships port side boat hung up at a ship's list of 25°.  Launching systems are designed for up to 20° list.

View of the interior of a life boat.

Abandon Ship

"When a drill is held in port, as many as possible of the lifeboats should be cleared and swung out. Each lifeboat should be launched and manoeuvred in the water at least once every three months. Where launching of free-fall lifeboats is impracticable, they may be lowered into the water provided that they are free-fall launched at least once every six months."

Here the ship is moored to it's starboard side which allows the port side boats to be exercised.  At a later port, the ship will moor to the opposite, port side, allowing the starbord boats to be tested.

Here we have the Serenade of the Seas in St. Thomas, USVI, working it's starboard boats.

Capacity of these boats is 150 passangers all with life vests along with one or more ship's crew.  Note the coxswain showing his helmet through the aft hatch.

Passangers assembling at lifeboat stations following the Abandon Ship announcement.

Port side boat station No. 6  

       

         Starboard side boat station No. 5

  Note, the vessel appears at this point to be on an even keel.

Awaiting their turn to disembark

Holding on

Another view

Entering Lifeboat

Lifeboat interior 

Most of the starboard side lifeboats have been launched.  Here the ship is listing to starboard 20° and 4° down by the stern.

It appears in this shot that all starboard side lifeboats have been launched and most have departed the scene.

When the ship keeled over to it's present position is not yet known.

Of the 13 lifeboats to port, three were not able to be deployed before the starboard list became too great.

Also shown are three inflatable life rafts which are normally stored uninflated in metal cannisters. 

Timeline Updated

  "I was navigating by sight because I knew the depths well and I have done this manoeuvre three or four times . . .  but this time I ordered the turn to late and I ended up in water that was too shallow. It don't know why it happened. . . I was a victim of my instincts."

Approaching Le Scole rocks on a heading of 351°, speed 15.5 knots (18 mph)

21:44 - Fast translation from his testimony - " . . .  foam astearn . . . while the ship is sailing at 15, 16 knots...radar was not pinging..... the order of the captain to avoid the obstacle came 40 seconds too late..."

I looked to the bow and saw waves breaking," he said in testimony leaked yesterday. "I saw the foam on the water. I realised the bow was heading for the rock and at that point I turned the helm completely to the right, stopping the engines and then I ordered full steam backwards."

         This assement was posted an another site by Bob Theriault on January 22, 2012 " . . . seems possible that the 300 meter long ship pivoted on its center of lateral plane as a result of a hard turn to starboard. This will result in the ship continuing along the original path for some time while the bow moves to the right, and the stern moves to the left (skids). At some point the skid turns into the desired path, but for a while the ship will see the stern moving to the left where it can then hit the rock at an angle. The stabilizer is shown deployed and not damaged. That would indicate an angular contact with the rock aft of the stabilizer, as would occur in a skid. The stabilizer may have also been deployed after the collision. Windage may have also caused the stern to fall off to port in the attempted turn. He just cut it too close for a boat that big and with that silly amount of windage."

 - Ship impacts rock.  Once he understood that he had grazed an outcropping to port, his immediate response was to turn hard to port to swing his stern away from the rock.  Point of impact, speed had been reduced to about 13.3 kts.

  

      Starboard rudder applied too late           Stern pivoting into rocks             Hard left rudder applied

       Within five minutes, lighting is lost throughout the ship.  This would indicate that the engineering plant had been flooded resulting in loss of propulsion power.  Many passengers begin to panic. Crew reassure passengers that nothing is wrong.

21:48 - Once he had cleared that area he reversed his rudder to starboard to head away from the shore,  back out toward open water in order to slow it down, normally the ship would reverse engines, but with no power at this point, the captain applied hard right rudder.  Speed had been reduced to 5 kts. by this time.

           With loss of the main ship's generators, emergency power sources kicked in providing limited emergency lightening throughout the ship, and power to critical navigational equipment, which we believe included the ship's rudder and bow thrusters.

          A first alarm is sounded: two long whistles and one short, informing the crew of a problem. Reports indicate that there was not a sense of urgency among much of the crew. 

          I could assume that the Engineering Main Control room was also lost to flooding and the Captain unaware of the cause of his losing communication with the Engineering Watch.

          Schettino ordered his first navigation officer, Giovanni Iaccarino, to go below and inspect the engine room.  "What I saw was terrifying," Iaccarino testified to Italian officials. "Everything was flooded and I literally had water up to my throat ... The engine section, the generators and the electricity transmission were all flooded." He alerted the bridge by shouting down an internal telephone.

     Swinging toward the beach                    Turning to seaward                    Crabbing Northwards

21:55 - Speed over the ground has slowed to 2 kts when off Gabbianara Point.  As the ship slowed down it became harder to steer, so although the turn had prevented it from crasing into Isola de Giglio, it was heading out to sea.

"Whenever you turn a ship hard over it's moving sideways, and when you're moving a large ship like that sideways through the water its going to slow down considerably."

22:05 - Forward speed 1.0 kts., broadside to track.  Ship's head begins a slow swing to starboard, perhaps assisted by the bow thrusters.

"The ship fired its port-docking thrusters - usually used for manoeuvring sideways while docking - but the hard right rudder had caused the Concordia to list to one side.

"By turning the ship across the direction of movement, the Captain used the ship as a brake to slow momentum."

"The Captain then used the bow thrusters to keep the bow of the ship pointing towards Giglio Porto."

22:06 - Ashore authorities received first alarm of problems through a passenger calling relatives

???? - Ship reached furthest point North and commences moving to the South, having traveled at most, a little over a  mile from point of initial impact.  It is unknown how long ship's backing power had been lost, however, it would seem a rather short distance for a ship of that size coming to a stop.  There is a report that he dropped the anchor and it's dragging may have contributed to reducing forward momentum.  I have seen one underwater photograph showing an anchor chain.

The captain insisted that his priority had been to manoeuvre the ship into shallow waters where an evacuation could be carried out more safely.

"I wanted the grecale [a northeast wind] to carry the ship towards the island," he said. "I ordered the anchors dropped because that would help me carry out the manoeuvre."

22:25 - Heading downstream at a speed of 0.7 kts. moving almost sideways

      Northward Movement Reversed    Crabbing Southward by Current                Grounded

The Concordia, probably pushed by the current and the docking thrusters, moved toward land.  The ship was moving almost sideways at this point.

22:26 - Communicating with the Coast Guard, Capt. Shettino admits to damage requesting but tugboat assistance only

22:26 aAt this time the Captin requested  tug boats from the Italina Coast Guard.

22:50 - At 0.5 kts., ship grounds at Gabbianara Point - 66 minutes having elapsed from initial impact

The stern of the Concordia finally struck the reef at Gabbianara point, swinging the bow to the right and pinning it against the rocks.

22:58 - Capt. Shettino orders Abandon Ship.  The “abandon ship” signal is given: seven short whistles and one long. Lifeboats begin their deployment.

Tract pictorials thanks to Captain’s John Konrad who "Narrates the Final Maneuvers of the Costa Concordia [VIDEO]"
http://gcaptain.com/gcaptains-john-konrad-narrates-the-final-maneuvers-of-the-costa-concordia-video/?37941

Nautical Chart

Nautical Chart 53135 covers the area around Isola Del Giglio

The distance from the latitude marks to the left,  42° 20' N to 42° 22' N, represents two nautical miles.

This chart shows that the Le Scole Point rock outcropping lies within the 10 Meter line.  Costa Concordia draws 8.2 Meters.  She wound up on the rocks at the point just South of Punta del Lazzaretto.

Soundings (water depth) in Meters

What Really Happened

But Schettino told a judge last week that his bosses not only knew he was going to sail perilously close to the island of Giglio — they told him to do it as a form of “advertising” for the cruise line.

“The Giglio salute on Jan 13 was planned with the company before we departed from Civitavecchia,” Schettino said, according to leaked excerpts from his 135-page statement published Sunday in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Il Messaggeo.

“We meant to do it the week before, but it was not possible because of bad weather,” he said.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/22/costa-concordia-death-toll-rises-to-13-as-divers-find-womans-body-near-bow-of-sunken-ship/

Ship's Track

Here are four pictures of the track published by Captain’s John Konrad who

"Narrates the Final Maneuvers of the Costa Concordia [VIDEO]"

 GCAPTAIN STAFF on JANUARY 19, 2012
Disclaimer, we will not know the EXACT details of what happened until the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR), aka Black Box, is analyzed.

Point of impact with rock outcropping.

Here the ship has lost all headway following her collison with the rock cropping, resulting in engine room flooding and loss of power.  Now, the ship's head is swinging to starboard under the action of bow thrusters.

Still being set down by the bow thrusters, the Captain appears to be in the process of grounding the vessel.

The ship comes to rest fast to the shore.