Costa Concordia sinking on TV

[Resolution]

I sat down to watch the second part of the program with great anticipation. By the end I was deeply frustrated at the number of real questions that had not been addressed, particularly who was on the bridgedeck in the minutes leading up to the impact and what their roles had been. Who initiated the course that ended up with sideswiping the rocks? Exactly when did the Captain take over the con , and from whom? What speed were they making and what would be turning circle (actual track) at that speed? Was there some wind or current that might have put them closer to the rocks (was this why the ship subsequently drifted back onto the island)? After striking the rocks what information would have reached the bridgedeck about the damage and when? What reports were made to the Captain on which he could decide whether/when to order the abandon ship?

So many things to consider before reaching a conclusion as to who should have been held responsible for it all. Is there an Italian equivalent of a MAIB report?

 

[Roberto]

Is there an Italian equivalent of a MAIB report?

https://www.mitma.gob.es/recursos_mfom/2012costaconcordia.pdf

 

[mjcoon]

I went on a 1 week Carnival cruise 15 years ago from here (Barbados). The cruise had started in San Juan, Puerto Rico on a Saturday, and it picked up a small percentage (about 10 - 15%) of punters in Barbados each week. We disembarked a week later at Barbados.
However as a result of this we were not subjected to an emergency drill for new joining passengers until the Sunday, the day after the majority of the punters had joined in San Juan. And we were disembarking a few days later.
Costa Concordia still had the same system re their emergency drill for new passengers - the ship had left port without doing a drill prior to leaving, and they were going to do it the next day I think. Trouble is, they clobbered those rocks and things went nasty very quickly - and the pax did not go where to go to re their lifeboat stations.
One good thing to come out of this is that it is now compulsory for all passenger emergency drills to be carried out before the vessel leaves port.

I wondered if there is a rule about what to do if the allocated lifeboat is unusable because cannot be launched or already underwater as in this case. Is everyone instructed to use the corresponding lifeboat on the other side?

They recounted how a lifeboat had to be levered down the canted hull using the oars taken from the roof.

 

[Slowboat35]

How's your head this morning, Mapis?

 

[newtothis]

I sat down to watch the second part of the program with great anticipation. By the end I was deeply frustrated at the number of real questions that had not been addressed, particularly who was on the bridgedeck in the minutes leading up to the impact and what their roles had been. Who initiated the course that ended up with sideswiping the rocks? Exactly when did the Captain take over the con , and from whom? What speed were they making and what would be turning circle (actual track) at that speed? Was there some wind or current that might have put them closer to the rocks (was this why the ship subsequently drifted back onto the island)? After striking the rocks what information would have reached the bridgedeck about the damage and when? What reports were made to the Captain on which he could decide whether/when to order the abandon ship?

So many things to consider before reaching a conclusion as to who should have been held responsible for it all. Is there an Italian equivalent of a MAIB report?

From the horse's mouth [we interviewed him before he got banged up]

Schettino admits that while he had not taken control of the navigation when he entered the bridge, he had asked the officer on watch what actions he was taking, particularly in relation to using manual steering and altering course at a given waypoint.
“It was a misunderstanding,” he concedes. He expected the bridge team to tell him more than they did.
“The question is, was this guy thinking I took the con when I entered the bridge?” asks Schettino.

AND
The centre of the ship’s turning circle as it began to move to starboard was towards the forward lifeboats, according to Schettino. This means as the rudders turned the bow to starboard and the vessel bodily moved that direction, the vessel’s stern swung to port, and towards the rocks.
Schettino’s sudden and dramatic hard turn to port with the ship’s rudder was an attempt to minimise the damage, he says, by trying to swing the stern away from the rocks.
Schettino says that the fellow officer who did not understand why he had made the command to turn the rudder to steer to port, had counter-ordered to make the helmsman to go further to starboard.
This is an Indonesian helmsman that Schettino says could not fully understand English or Italian, and to whom a junior officer on chart plotting duties was forced to stop what she was doing and render assistance.
There are even reports that the helmsman, who Schettino says has now vanished without a trace, had even been turning the rudder in the opposite way to the commands he was given.

Have to say that he blames everyone but himself and doesn't come off well in the interview.

 

[mjcoon]

From the horse's mouth [we interviewed him before he got banged up]

Schettino admits that while he had not taken control of the navigation when he entered the bridge, he had asked the officer on watch what actions he was taking, particularly in relation to using manual steering and altering course at a given waypoint.
“It was a misunderstanding,” he concedes. He expected the bridge team to tell him more than they did.
“The question is, was this guy thinking I took the con when I entered the bridge?” asks Schettino.

AND
The centre of the ship’s turning circle as it began to move to starboard was towards the forward lifeboats, according to Schettino. This means as the rudders turned the bow to starboard and the vessel bodily moved that direction, the vessel’s stern swung to port, and towards the rocks.
Schettino’s sudden and dramatic hard turn to port with the ship’s rudder was an attempt to minimise the damage, he says, by trying to swing the stern away from the rocks.
Schettino says that the fellow officer who did not understand why he had made the command to turn the rudder to steer to port, had counter-ordered to make the helmsman to go further to starboard.
This is an Indonesian helmsman that Schettino says could not fully understand English or Italian, and to whom a junior officer on chart plotting duties was forced to stop what she was doing and render assistance.
There are even reports that the helmsman, who Schettino says has now vanished without a trace, had even been turning the rudder in the opposite way to the commands he was given.

Have to say that he blames everyone but himself and doesn't come off well in the interview.

The programme appeared to be showing diagrams of the helm movement as if there were a black-box style recording device running at the time. Of course in the absence of a "cockpit voice recorder" that would not explain the justification for the movements...

 

[Biggles Wader]

I got the impression that not telling the coastguard about the incident immediately and delaying getting the pax to muster stations were the big errors.(After the initial big error of hitting the rocks)
Was there a hint of phone calls to head office and someone there taking command? I dont think we learned too much more than we already knew.

 

[NormanS]

The chief of the local police, and the dive rescue team did an excellent job.
The salvage operation, not covered in the programme, was a huge (and expensive) achievement.

 

[Kukri]

I haven’t seen the programmes. But I have managed a cruise ship and I will try to summarise what I wrote at the time; I wrote it as a Facebook “note” and I can’t find it.

1. “Fly-bys” are an established cruise ship procedure. To my knowledge P&O Cruises had standing orders which set out the procedures to be followed but evidently Costa, part of the same Carnival Cruise Line group, did not. The P&O standing orders were based on the use of radar parallel indexing and required “escapes” to be plotted before starting the close approach. Parallel indexing was not used and no escapes were plotted.

2. The AIS tracks available show that the CC allowed a ship which was overhauling her on her port side to go clear before altering course towards the island. This is good practice but it meant that she approached the island on a broader bearing than she usually did. It’s not clear that Schettino was informed of this by the officers on the bridge.

3. It seems clear that there was a loss of situational awareness on the bridge of the CC. She was not where Schettino thought she was, and either nobody else knew where she was, contrary to standard bridge procedure, or if another officer did know, then contrary to BRM nobody spoke up. According to the Italian report she was 803 metres shorewards of where she thought she was.

4. The reef “can opened” her, both engine rooms will have flooded very quickly and she will have lost all propulsion in a very few minutes. (Edited to add - the Italian report gives the timings - she lost power inside three minutes)

5. The ship’s movements between the flooding of the engine rooms and the grounding were not under the control of anyone on board. The Italian report also makes this clear.

6. The evacuation was remarkably successful.

7. As the ship down flooded she tripped on her heel; that was what capsized her. (This is why “trim for dry docking” is such a big subject for deck officers).

 

[Slowboat35]

I get the impression that Schettino was a showman first and foremost, too much razzamatazz and kingpin of the ship's entertainment, and though doubtless comepetent thus far completely lost the plot upon running aground in a bizarrely pointless and reckless act of bravado and becoming paralysed in denial of what he'd done. The lack of assertiveness among the other officers seems surprising too - no one spoke out before or after the crash despite desperate and obvious need to - was he a bully or martinet too - in other words a Queeg?

I get the impression of an unassailable authority-gradient in that crew, they can't all have been such wimps or starstruck by him that they were so dazzled by his proctoheliosis to the extent no-one would intervene with essential matters like not issuing a Mayday or calling an evacuation without astonishing delay. A goodly part of the ship's officers must have acquiesced with his decision to run away - how many went with him? Why do we not know? They seem to have commandeered a lifeboat for themselves and presuably the mysterious floozie. Why is this not addressed in the accident report?

The evacuaton was only so successful due to the miraculous presence of that rock ledge that prevented her turning turtle, had she fetched up on a steeper shore or had the wind not blown her there the body count would have been thousands.

So many questions outstanding - but it does look as though there were many more who should have been in the dock alongside him.

 

[sfellows]

If Kukri is correct with the facts, then it was a miracle there were not more casualties. If there had been an offshore wind and the ship had not drifted onto the shore then I suspect many hundreds, if not thousands would have died.

 

[Kukri]

If Kukri is correct with the facts, then it was a miracle there were not more casualties. If there had been an offshore wind and the ship had not drifted onto the shore then I suspect many hundreds, if not thousands would have died.

Not necessarily; modern cruise ships are “designed to sink on an even keel”, so to speak! It might if anything have been easier to complete the evacuation, although it is also possible that the rate of flooding might have been faster.

The photos show that the aft mooring deck was submerged before the capsize; I don’t know, but I speculate that the weathertight doors giving access to the mooring deck may not have been fully dogged down.

The emergency generators (she will have had two) would cut out at a 20 degree angle of heel. Having now glanced through the Italian report it mentions that the emergency generators only ran at all because a relay was bridged with a screwdriver (??) and their water cooling system failed (?).

The davit system would operate without power, under gravity alone, and there would have been some emergency battery power (but not much) after the emergency generators failed.

I certainly agree that it was miraculous that more lives were not lost.

I am not alone in being surprised that no-one ashore was prosecuted.

The islanders are to be commended I think.

 

[PilotWolf]

I wondered if there is a rule about what to do if the allocated lifeboat is unusable because cannot be launched or already underwater as in this case. Is everyone instructed to use the corresponding lifeboat on the other side?

They recounted how a lifeboat had to be levered down the canted hull using the oars taken from the roof.

If the crew are following SOP you should be redirected to another muster station BUT that requires appropriate command and control orders.

My ex did her STCW95 with several Costa crew. It was clear from their input that a lot more lives would have been lost had it not been for the efforts of the domestic and housekeeping crew members. I can’t see the program here so not sure if that came to light?

W.

 

[Kukri]

Emergency procedures are built around the premise that officers may not be available.

See, eg, here for a ship where passengers lives were saved by the entertainment staff:

MTS Oceanos - Wikipedia

 

[Resolution]

Kukri, how would the officers and crew be expected to communicate , give orders , receive damage reports once the ship's main power had been lost?

 

[Kukri]

Kukri, how would the officers and crew be expected to communicate , give orders , receive damage reports once the ship's main power had been lost?

I think you know the answer, and indeed I think you probably own an example of a hand held VHF set!

The CC like most modern cruise ships was diesel electric. (This allows the power to be directed to propulsion or to hotel services at will).

Emergency routines - and they are practiced until they are routine - are built around word of mouth and the use of hand held VHF sets if available. The ship’s horn can be used to initiate the “abandon ship” procedure.

 

[penfold]

The programme appeared to be showing diagrams of the helm movement as if there were a black-box style recording device running at the time. Of course in the absence of a "cockpit voice recorder" that would not explain the justification for the movements...

Vessels of this era had data recorders analogous to FDRs in aircraft, it's quite probable that the CC had one fitted.

 

[Kukri]

Vessels of this era had data recorders analogous to FDRs in aircraft, it's quite probable that the CC had one fitted.

Voyage data recorders (“VDRs”) have been compulsory on ships of over 3,000 GT since 2002. As Penfold says, they are very similar to FDRs on aircraft.

 

[Kukri]

I’ve now read the Italian report. It isn’t quite like an MAIB report but it is interesting.

 

[Capt Popeye]

Well not shown in the 2 part programme, but in earlier footage shown on National TV in UK /GB its show a Staff member , a Woman in a Uniform , instructing all passengers to return to their cabins fairly early on in the events '

I do wonder just how many Passengers died in their cabins as a result of this instruction ?

Might mentuion , after experience of many Cruise Ship holidays in last 15 years , that the Cruise Lines appear to Staff their Liners with Muti Nationalities but grouping the Different Nationalities in to various Duties ; These different Nationality Staff oft seen talking in their mother tounge , so maybe the Ships Navigation Offices were also used to talking in such a way ?

Reading Mr Kuri comments I guess that the 2 main culprits are the Captain and Head Office , maybe disagreeing about the need to muster order to Abandon Ship at an early and therefore safer stage in the event , recall reading this in an account of the Ship in the Penlee disaster ; after all guess that the Lifeboats could have all been launched ok if not better if launched much sooner when the Ship was floating upright.

Me decided NOT to take any more Sea Cruises again .