Woman Defends Cruise Ship Captain
ROME — Rescue crews went back in the water Thursday to search for 21 people who remain unaccounted for following Friday’s tragic Italian cruise liner accident.
Explosive experts with the Italian Navy blew out more holes in the hull so divers can have better access to the ship.
The Costa Concordia, piloted by Capt. Francesco Schettino, was carrying more than 4,200 people when it hit a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio. The captain is currently under house arrest, possibly facing charges of manslaughter for causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship.
According to the Associated Press, the Italian media is reporting that prosecutors want to interview a 25-year-old woman who had worked as a hostess on the ship but was not on duty when she boarded Jan. 13 in a Roman port. The woman tells the Italian media that she was called up to the bridge of the Concordia after it struck the reef to translate evacuation instructions to the Russian passengers. She says the captain should be considered a hero because he saved more than 3,000 lives.
Prosecutors maintain the captain abandoned the passengers when he left the ship in a lifeboat. In a recorded telephone conversation, the Italian coast guard official berates the captain while he was in a lifeboat and orders him to return to the ship.
Others report the captain was drinking at the ship bar just before the disaster. Prosecutors are expected to charge him with manslaughter claiming the tragedy was caused by the captain’s “inexcusable” manuever close to the island, possibly for the benefit of the ship’s head waiter.
Just minutes before the disaster, the head waiter’s sister on the island of Giglio posted a Facebook message saying, “In a short period of time the Concordia ship will pass very close. A big greeting to my brother!”
Officials say some 500,000 gallons of fuel on board the ship could leak into the sea. Teams are constructing a protective barrier around the ship as a precaution.
“For a person who was born by the sea to see something like this; when I think of it, I get goose bumps,” Angela Rum, an Italian tobacco shop keeper said.
