RSS Feed
January 16th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“While the investigation is ongoing, preliminary indications are that there
may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s Master,
Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences.
“The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and the
captain’s judgment in handling the emergency appears to have not followed
standard Costa procedures.”
Italian
prosecutors claim Captain Francesco Schettino, 52, had approached the
island’s coastline in a “carelessly clumsy manner” in the moments before a
catastrophic collision with an underwater rock formation that caused the
ship to list violently and eventually capsize.
Defence Minister Giampaolo Di Paola, a naval admiral, said the disaster did
not appear to have been caused by natural or technical factors.
“In my estimation there was a serious human error, which had dramatic and
tragic consequences,” he told RAI state television.
The death toll from Friday night’s disaster, one of the worst in the cruise
industry’s recent history, rose to six today after rescuers discovered three
more victims, including the bodies of two elderly men wearing life vests
inside the vessel. A further 15 people remained missing.
On Sunday, the ship’s Italian crew services manager, Manrico Giampetroni, was
winched from the wreck by a helicopter after being trapped for 36 hours. A
honeymoon couple were found alive and well in a cabin late on Saturday.
Prosecutors believe Mr Schettino had been intending to perform the nautical
equivalent of a fly-by past the island’s main port when the accident
happened. It had apparently become a long-standing practice for the Costa
Concordia to sail close to the island in order to greet its inhabitants with
a siren from the ship.
The tradition appears to have begun when the wife of a former senior officer
lived on the island and he would take the ship close to Giglio to greet her.
There were reports last night that the vessel’s current officers had a
friend ashore, from the Italian merchant navy, that they wanted to salute in
a similar manner.
As the ship approached the port from the south, it sailed too close to the
coastline and struck a rocky reef, known to locals as “Le Scole”, a few
hundred yards out. Islanders said they had never seen the ship try to pass
so close before. Ships usually pass by up to five miles away.
A 160ft gash was torn in the £370 million ship’s hull, causing it to take on
large quantities of water in minutes and list violently. The 4,200
passengers and crew were told to abandon ship.
Franco Verusio, the procurator of Grosseto who is leading the investigation,
said: “Schettino approached the island of Giglio in a carelessly clumsy
manner. The ship hit a reef which embedded itself in the left flank, the
ship listed and took on lots of water in the space of two or three minutes.
Captain Schettino was in command at that point. “He was the one who ordered
that course to be taken, at least according to what we have discovered.
There was someone in particular that wanted to be signalled from the ship.”
Mr Schettino, who is being questioned on suspicion of multiple manslaughter,
claimed yesterday that the reef had not appeared on the nautical charts and
had not been picked up by the ship’s navigation systems. “We should
have had deep water beneath us,” he said. “We were about 300
metres [1,000ft] from the rocks more or less.”
Prosecutors also accused Mr Schettino of abandoning his ship “well before”
the last of his passengers, a criminal offence that can carry a sentence of
up to 12 years in jail. The captain denied this, insisting he was the last
to leave.
The Concordia capsized after the captain tried to turn around and head into
the island’s port in an apparent attempt to make it easier to evacuate.
Survivors, including 23 British passengers and 12 British crew members,
claimed the evacuation effort was “chaos”. Mr Schettino’s lawyer, Bruno
Leporatti, said his client’s manoeuvre had saved the lives of “several
hundred people”. The rescue of the Korean honeymoon couple and Mr
Giampetroni, who had a broken leg, gave hope to divers searching thousands
of cabins for the missing. The ship’s “black box” navigation system is being
examined — with officials saying that the vessel was up to four miles off
course.
Pier Luigi Foschi, chairman and chief executive of Costa Crociere, will today
face the media for the first time at two press conferences in Genoa, as
Italian prosecutors continue to question Capt Schettino in custody.
He is reportedly being held on suspicion of multiple manslaughter and
abandoning ship.
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
