Costa Concordia SINKING

[vanki4]

This is a snippet from a fascinating series of videos taken by a Concordia passenger.

 

At thirty seconds in, as the passenger is in the lifeboat, you can see other lifeboats being lowered in the background. Chilling.

 

 

And when he gets to shore, in the next video, I can't help but wonder why there are so many lifeboats stacked up at the dock. At least one is idling.

 

 

Why didn't they go back to get more passengers?

 

Cruise industry experts: Is it SOP for the crew to stay with the passengers after the lifeboat has been unloaded? Or did the crew just decide that they had enough risk for one day?

Few of my countryman's gave a press-conference for the BG medias.

I know for the 1st Engineer's boat ( or the boat who took him from the stbd side when the vessel was at over 20 degrees list) . That boat made 6 routes to the Concordia in order to collect more people from the water and from the stbd .

 

Credit for that lad because he ordered to his colleagues from the same boat to come back to the vessel in full understanding how dangerous the sinking vessel could be .

The journalists said only on ,,his" boat have been transferred about 500 persons.

 

Don't want to be in a role of a defender ,but some of the crew were very adequate in some moments imho .

[shipfriend_max]

Today Smit will begin to prepare the pumping out process for the Concordia to begin this week - good!

 

[DinghyRacer]

Davyjonesrugrat,

 

In all this time, I never noticed your signature line! :D

 

His is the best sig here by a long long distance. It made me chuckle each time i saw it!

[degarr]

On the webcam it looks like they are doing some heavy lifting for fuel now

[DinghyRacer]

No' in the wee seaside toon o' Dunbar, ye cannae!

 

Here we have to take our lives in our hands crossing the road to the chippies, or around the corner to the kabab. :eek:

 

(Sorry...off topic but we've only been in Scotland for a couple of months and I'm still adjusting :D)

 

You have a kebab shop? Gosh, that's very exotic for Scotland, or at least the part I live in - East Fife.

 

It's 10 miles to anywhere from where I am, but a chinese take-away opened a little while ago in the village. We have a pub that used to serve decent beer but doesn't now, it's food was grim. The chippie is OK and cheap, and we have a David Sands shop and seeing what changes now the Co-op have taken them over will be interesting.

 

I moved here from Leeds and yes, it's so so different. However having the sea a short drive away is wonderful (I love to walk on the north end of the West Sands at St Andrews), and so (for me) is having the Highlands almost on my doorstep.

[DinghyRacer]

I hope not. An airplane crashed because of exactly that. The A320 is all electronic. The pilot uses a joystick to control the airplane. The computer interprets the pilot's inputs and it is the computer that actually moves the airplane's control surfaces (electronically).

 

At any rate, the pilot was doing a fly-by at the Paris Airshow (this of course is an approved maneuver). With the landing gear down and plane in a landing configuration the pilot safely performed the fly-by. But then when the pilot wanted to pull up and the computer basically said no, we are landing, and that is exactly what the plane did - it landed in the forest beyond the runway.

 

<snip>

 

Not accurate about Habsheim. The plane crashed because the pilot left it too late to order TOGA power - it takes engines at idle time to spool up and produce power. Just like (allegedly) Concordia - the captain left it too late to change course.

 

And given the height the plane was flying at, it was bound to crash into trees if the engines didn't produce power when required, which they couldn't because of the spool-up time.

 

However there is also a lot of conspiracy theory about this particular plane crash, and also a suggestion that the altimeter wasn't in the units the crew was used to - you can get metric and imperial altimeters. Personally I think that close to the ground visual clues should suffice - I say that as a Silver C glider pilot.

[DinghyRacer]

<snip>

We will never know how many accidents CRM has prevented because nearly all accidents have a series of events that link up like a chain and that chain can be broken by just one simple defensive mechanism which may be just a few spoken words like “Captain, I think we should use the radar.”

 

<snip>

 

We don't know at that level, but effective CRM prevented a major accident when G-YMMM landed short at Heathrow after fuel froze and prevented the engines spooling up. It was also part of the safe outcome for the A380 that had an uncontained engine explosion, the BA 747 that suffered total flame-out when it flew through a volcanic plume, and the Sioux City accident where a dead-heading training pilot assisted.

[dmwnc1959]

Today Smit will begin to prepare the pumping out process for the Concordia to begin this week - good!

 

Web cam image of barge with crane alongside Costa Concordia, not sure if it's the one offloading fuel?

 

[Milaandra]

Ok how about Colin Ferrell playing the wreckless Captain Schettino......and Sam Elliott playing the highly agitated Commandant De Falco. Ok I can't imagine Sam Elliott with an Italian accent either....but he'd NAIL the highly agitated part!!! :)

 

Colin Farrell is interesting!

 

It's hard to finish the casting until we know who they all end up being.

 

How about Rufus Sewell for the captain? eh? A bit sinister, he even has the hair!

 

I want Danny Nucci in it somewhere. Love that guy. (he's the one who played Leo's Italian buddy in Titanic)

 

He could even play the captain, but only if Schettino ends up being acquitted of most of the charges. He's too likeable to play evil, but he could play the tragic hero, flawed but basically good, haunted by images of the results of his mistakes...

 

It's a shame Harvey Keitel is so old now...that's who I want for de Falco.

 

It may be type-casting, but I like Beatrice Rosen for Domnica...she's the one who played the Russian girlfriend in 2012.

[QM2 fan]

Not accurate about Habsheim. The plane crashed because the pilot left it too late to order TOGA power - it takes engines at idle time to spool up and produce power. Just like (allegedly) Concordia - the captain left it too late to change course.

 

And given the height the plane was flying at, it was bound to crash into trees if the engines didn't produce power when required, which they couldn't because of the spool-up time.

 

However there is also a lot of conspiracy theory about this particular plane crash, and also a suggestion that the altimeter wasn't in the units the crew was used to - you can get metric and imperial altimeters. Personally I think that close to the ground visual clues should suffice - I say that as a Silver C glider pilot.

The A320 isn't nicknamed "The strimmer" for nothing !

CRM didn't save the 777 skipper from abuse in certain circles though..

[DinghyRacer]

The A320 isn't nicknamed "The strimmer" for nothing !

CRM didn't save the 777 skipper from abuse in certain circles though..

 

I didn't know about the nickname, I did know about the abuse the captain got and was disgusted by it. AFAIK most people who have tried the incident in the simulator fared far worse.

 

Page back, someone asked about investigation. In the UK we have the MAIB - similar to the RAIB (railways) and AAIB (air) - which if it's anything like as good as the RAIB and AAIB is very, very through. certainly the AAIB report I saw into a fatal glider accident covered all the bases.

 

Hopefully Italy has a comparable equivalent to the MAIB who will be hard at work as I type.

[dingoboy]

Respectfully... please... can you post some stats/info here to back that up because they have done very well in independent testing and have yet to be used in a Concrodia type disaster. If you are not truly familiar it might not be best to tarnish this type of safety gear.

 

 

 

Well... you would too if you just dropped down a 60 foot chute. I've said worse coming down water slides at Six Flags... but I wasn't in any real danger :p And ultimately... it's about getting off fast, isn't it?

 

Actually I'll jump in here. I'm in aviation. And the stats clearly slow when an evacuation is called in an emergency situation from an aircraft there will be injuries. Often quite serious ones.

 

By way of a concrete example in one 'test' of evacuation slides it was announce to the volunteers in the aircraft that the first people off the aircraft would get a token reward, eg $10. This was to try to replicate the rush to evacuate in a real emergency.

 

The result, one person became a paraplegic.

 

And that was from a height of just a few floors up, on a 45 degree slope, not a vertical drop of 6-8 decks.

 

Injuries using such equipment, some serious, in an emergency are bound to happen.

 

But my biggest concern, if one of these chutes/or rafts fail to deploy or can't be used because of the ship listing as in this instance, 500 people instantly have no where to go.

[Milaandra]

Colin Farrell is interesting!

 

It's hard to finish the casting until we know who they all end up being.

 

How about Rufus Sewell for the captain? eh? A bit sinister, he even has the hair!

 

I want Danny Nucci in it somewhere. Love that guy. (he's the one who played Leo's Italian buddy in Titanic)

 

He could even play the captain, but only if Schettino ends up being acquitted of most of the charges. He's too likeable to play evil, but he could play the tragic hero, flawed but basically good, haunted by images of the results of his mistakes...

 

It's a shame Harvey Keitel is so old now...that's who I want for de Falco.

 

It may be type-casting, but I like Beatrice Rosen for Domnica...she's the one who played the Russian girlfriend in 2012.

 

 

Oh, my husband had these ideas:

 

Schettino - Alfred Molina

de Falco - Stanley Tucci (I like it!)

[Milaandra]

But my biggest concern, if one of these chutes/or rafts fail to deploy or can't be used because of the ship listing as in this instance, 500 people instantly have no where to go.

 

This may be a bit out there, but as the "everything else has failed" method of getting passengers down to the inflatable life rafts, what about repelling equipment with some trained crew members?

 

I mentioned this before, but nobody bit. I saw somewhere about "pods". Does anyone know anything about them?

[DinghyRacer]

<snip>

repelling equipment

<snip>

 

Hope you mean rappelling (abseling) equipment! Otherwise we are getting into how helecopters fly - so ugly the earth repels them, or so some of my friends say.

[peterhof]

This may be a bit out there, but as the "everything else has failed" method of getting passengers down to the inflatable life rafts, what about repelling equipment with some trained crew members?

 

I mentioned this before, but nobody bit. I saw somewhere about "pods". Does anyone know anything about them?

 

Assuming you are referring to the azimuthing "pods" - these are the modern way of propulsion and stearing for the ship. Instead of static propellers at the end of shafts attached to the engines, these "pods" hang straight down from the engine room and have pitch moveable blades that either give forward or backward power. The pods themselves rotate to provide accurate and efficient stearing.

 

Apart from giving better navigational control, the vibration is practically non existant and makes for a quieter cruise experience for the passengers. The old shaft and propeller type system is prone to vibration and noise which is transfered throughout the ship. On non "pod" ships you always know when the engines are transmitting drive power, but with "pod" ships you often don't realise that you are underweigh at all!

 

Regarding the lifeboat issue - one quick and easy solution to the loss of lifeboats being able to be deployed on one side and therefore losing an escape method for half of the passengers and crew, is this.......

 

Each lifeboat these days is a magnificent machine and created to cope with any scenario - this part of the safety at sea issue has been revised and revised. The next revision should include an incased inflatable life raft on the roof of every lifeboat sufficient to double the effective capacity of all the boats. The lifeboat would be launched from the promenade deck by derrick (this system is over 100 years old and needs looking at). Once in the water it would be driven slightly away from the stricken ship and the liferaft on the roof deployed. It would be attached to the rear of the lifeboat and pulled back to the ship for passengers on lower decks to get into via the portels that are used as gangways when in port or tender exits/entry. Anybody that was in the water already could be brought onto the liferafts.

 

There should also be lifeboats & liferafts at the stern of the ship - in total there should be enough means of evacuation for three times at least the number of people aboard.

 

Make no mistake - this disaster is as important to future safety at sea procedures as the sinking of the Titanic was 100 years ago. On that ship there was not enough means of evacuation for 75% of the passengers, as she was deemed unsinkable by the designer and the White Star Line. A century later, passenger ships are over 6 times the size of the Titanic and carry over 4 times more passengers and crew. For transatlantic cruises new regulations may say that no ship must cross an ocean alone. Another cruiseship should always be within 20 miles of the other - i.e. one hour sailing distance. This often happens today actually, with ships of the same company repositioning on the same day together. RCI & Celebrity ships can often dock in the same ports on the same day in the Azores and Nassau, on their way to Europe from North America.

 

No matter how many times the crew practice evacuation drills or when muster drills for passengers happen, in an emergency everything changes - self preservation kicks in and anything can and does happen.

[Hebersgyll]

I don't know, it is the sun magazine and only the word of one crew member. Now if other crew members come forward or passengers collaborate the story then that def. points to a big problem that didn't just start last week. :(

 

Anyone know if it was an Italian whale or not? Was the whale just sunbathing near Sorrento or sent to spy on Sgr Berlusconi's antics at the time?

[Milaandra]

Hope you mean rappelling (abseling) equipment! Otherwise we are getting into how helecopters fly - so ugly the earth repels them, or so some of my friends say.

 

Oh, no! Now everyone will know that I'm not an extreme sports affectionado! My secret is out! :D:D

[Milaandra]

Assuming you are referring to the azimuthing "pods" -

 

No, it was mentioned as a comment to a news story I read, and it was definitely some sort of evacuation equipment.

 

It caught my eye, and I figured with the amazing technical backgrounds found here, someone might be familiar with it.

[QM2 fan]

Sky news reporting 16th body found..

[degarr]

Sky news reporting 16th body found..

 

Yes http://news.google.com.au/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=au&hl=en&topic=w&ncl=dCdN9rEG9EwAmQMwF-Lr64-4wwGQM

ROME (AP) — Officials say divers searching the toppled Costa Concordia have discovered another body in the submerged cruise ship.

The discovery on the third floor deck brings to 16 the number of bodies found since the Jan. 13 grounding. Officials at the Tuscan prefect's office said Tuesday they couldn't immediately confirm Italian news reports that the body was that of a woman.

The discovery was made as a large platform carrying a crane and other equipment hitched itself to the shipwreck, signaling the start of preliminary operations to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the ship's tanks.

Actual pumping of the oil isn't expected to begin until Saturday, and will continue in tandem with search and rescue operations.

[Milaandra]

I moved here from Leeds and yes, it's so so different.

 

Until a couple of months ago, I was Canadian, so now and then I miss the variety of fast food choices, and I definitely miss real salads. You can get some exotic lettuces in the grocers and I can put together a North American style salad at home, but in a restaurant it's two leaves of iceburg, a tomato and some salad cream. :eek:

 

Loving Indian food, though! And it's soooo gorgeous here.

 

That's why I have so much time on my hands just now. I'm waiting for feedback on my CV before starting my job search.

 

Sorry everyone for being off-topic. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming... :)

[degarr]

Yes http://news.google.com.au/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=au&hl=en&topic=w&ncl=dCdN9rEG9EwAmQMwF-Lr64-4wwGQM

ROME (AP) — Officials say divers searching the toppled Costa Concordia have discovered another body in the submerged cruise ship.

Also from same link

ROME (AP) — A large platform carrying a crane and other equipment hitched itself to the toppled Costa Concordia on Tuesday, signaling the start of preliminary operations to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the grounded cruise ship before it leaks into the pristine Tuscan sea.

Actual pumping of the oil isn't expected to begin until Saturday, but officials from the Dutch shipwreck salvage firm Smit were seen on the bow of the Concordia and in the waters nearby making preparations to remove the fuel.

Officials have identified an initial six tanks that will be tapped, located in a relatively easy-to-reach area of the ship. Franco Gabrielli, head of the national civil protection agency, told reporters Tuesday that once the tanks are emptied, 50 percent of the fuel aboard the ship will have been extracted.

The pumping will continue 24 hours a day barring rough seas or technical glitches in this initial phase, he said.

"This is a complicated operation," Gabrielli warned. Smit has estimated the extraction operation could last a month.

The Concordia ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Jan. 13 after the captain veered from his approved course and gashed the ship's hull on a reef, forcing the panicked evacuation of 4,200 passengers and crew.

So far 15 bodies have been found. Six of the badly decomposed bodies remain unidentified, and are presumed to be among some of the 17 passengers and crew still unaccounted for.

Divers, meanwhile, continued blasting holes inside the steel-hulled ship to ease access for crews searching for the missing. The search and rescue operation will continue in tandem with the fuel removal operation.

On Monday, islanders and officials spotted an oil film on the water about 300 meters (yards) from the wreck. Absorbent panels were put around the oil to soak up the substance and officials said Tuesday it was a very thin film that didn't present any significant levels of toxicity.

Giglio and its waters are part of a protected seven-island marine park, favored by VIPs and known for its clear waters and porpoises, dolphins and whales.

Gabrielli said he had formally asked Costa Crociere SpA, the owner of the Concordia, to come up with a plan for what to do with the innards of the ship that are floating away — the tables and chairs and other furniture that are being hauled away by barge on a daily basis.

And he said he had asked provincial authorities to designate a site on the mainland where the material can be dumped.

Costa is a unit of Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's biggest cruise operator.

It has blamed the captain, Francesco Schettino, for the disaster, saying he made an unauthorized and unapproved deviation from the route. Schettino remains under house arrest facing accusations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all passengers were off.

Early Tuesday, amid continued outrage by passengers of the chaotic evacuation, Costa promised to refund the full cost of the cruise, reimburse all travel expenses to and from the ship, all on-board expenses and any medical expenses incurred as a result of the grounding.

"Every effort will be made to return the valuables left in the cabin safe," Costa said in a statement.

[HelloHelloHola]

We don't know at that level, but effective CRM prevented a major accident when G-YMMM landed short at Heathrow after fuel froze and prevented the engines spooling up. It was also part of the safe outcome for the A380 that had an uncontained engine explosion, the BA 747 that suffered total flame-out when it flew through a volcanic plume, and the Sioux City accident where a dead-heading training pilot assisted.

 

Is BRM similar to CRM in terms of principles and in practice? Is BRM mandatory or widely practiced? Also, could the Corcordia incident be prevented if BRM was practiced? I am assuming it was not practiced, I could be wrong.

[Milaandra]

Sky news reporting 16th body found..

 

I'm so impressed with the recovery team. What dedication!

 

I keep wondering about the man and his daughter who were reported to have slipped overboard. Wouldn't you think that with this many people in the water and shoreline that they would have found some drowning victims?