HOPES OF finding any more survivors from the wreck of the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship which ran aground off the Tuscan coast last Friday night, have all but disappeared.
For the second time this week, the search of the grounded liner was suspended yesterday when the boat again registered a small movement. By the end of a day when no more victims were found, the death toll remained at 11, with 28 still missing.
Rescue authorities remain concerned the boat’s position, stuck on a ledge 30 metres deep and yards from the coastline of the Isola Del Giglio, is far from stable.
Environment Minister Corrado Clini admitted in parliament yesterday the forecast bad weather could yet see the ship slide off its ledge into deeper waters, where it would sink. No one could be certain what would happen at that point, he added.
Mr Clini also said the ship’s operator, Costa Cruise, had been instructed to ensure that pollution barriers be put in place to limit the damage if the tanks, containing 2,400 tonnes of fuel, should rupture and leak into the Mediterranean.
He said fuel extraction might take up to two weeks but the process could not begin until such time as the search for survivors had finished.
In London yesterday for a bilateral meeting with British prime minister David Cameron, Italian prime minister Mario Monti sounded cautiously optimistic, saying an environmental disaster “could and should be avoided”.
Meanwhile, the decision late on Tuesday night to release the Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino, granting him house arrest, has prompted bitter criticism, not only from Grosetto public prosecutor Francesco Verusio, who has accused him of manslaughter, but also from relatives of the dead.
Mr Verusio is expected to challenge that decision in court today.
Even though preliminary court judge Valeria Montesarchio granted Capt Schettino house arrest, she still concluded he had been guilty of “seriously culpable behaviour”, including the “foolhardy manoeuvre which saw him sail too close to the island; the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the collision, he underestimated the damage done to a vital part [engine room] of the ship; his delay both in sounding the alarm and in making clear to the coast guard services the true nature of the ship’s condition . . . ”
Clearly, the most serious accusation facing Capt Schettino is the well-documented one that he abandoned the ship long before the last of the passengers were evacuated.
Asked by Judge Montesarchio on Tuesday what he was doing in a lifeboat before the evacuation had been completed, he reportedly claimed that he had “slipped and fallen” into the lifeboat.
That unlikely version of events was challenged yesterday by Giglio parish priest Fr Vittorio Dossi, who claimed he had seen Capt Schettino climb out of a lifeboat on shore, complete with his mobile phone and PC. Furthermore, two other ship’s officers, Dimitri Christidis and Silvia Coronica, are reported to have been in the lifeboat with Capt Schettino.
The position of both the Costa Cruise company and Capt Schettino was also further jeopardised yesterday by a BBC report that, according to the shipping journal Lloyd's List Intelligence, the Costa Concordiahad performed a similar "sail-by" during a cruise last August when it allegedly passed within 230 metres of Giglio.
Many independent witnesses have claimed such a nautical “salute” is a regular practice. In the meantime, Mr Clini is considering a serious limitation on the routes travelled by cruise liners.