On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground, killing 32 passengers. Ten years after the tragedy, the survivors are still haunted by the sinking.
It was in front of the island of Giglio, off the coast of Tuscany, that the Costa Concordia ran aground. That night, Umberto Trotti still remembers it perfectly. He confided his memories to AFP. After hearing the cries of his wife and two children, he jumped off the boat to join them in a canoe.
“It was my instinct, my family needed me. I jumped from a height of 3-4 meters”, he says, adding: “I landed on a German, poor man.” Ten years after that traumatic night, the family was reluctant to travel to the island of Giglio to participate in a remembrance ceremony and a torchlight procession.
In addition to these ceremonies, ship sirens and church bells will sound on the island at 9:45 p.m. to commemorate the moment the ship struck a reef.
The Costa Concordia was carrying 4,229 passengers
During the sinking, a large part of the 4,229 passengers were having dinner. This was the case of Umberto Trotti and his wife Fjorda, who had chosen the Costa Concordia to celebrate their honeymoon with their two-year-old daughter Francesca and their six-month-old baby Carlo.
“We were saved by a cook from Como” in Lombardy (north), recalls Umberto Trotti. Paolo Maspero, who was still wearing his chef’s hat, “took my six-month-old son in his arms and (…) led us outside. The water was rising. If he hadn’t come to our rescue, we would have died,” underlines Umberto Trotti, who could not swim.
The commander implicated in the drama
A few hours later the images filmed by the coast guard, we can see divers looking for victims in the restaurant invaded by water. In this drama, the behavior of the commander, Francesco Schettino, had been called into question. The latter was slow to sound the alarm and was also one of the first to leave the ship.
The evacuation began more than an hour after the collision, by which time all the lifeboats on one side of the ship were unusable. People panicked when the electricity went out, plunging the boat into darkness.
The former captain was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2015 for his responsibility for several homicides, the maritime accident as well as abandoning the ship before all passengers and crew had been evacuated. He has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and his lawyers are expected to ask this year for him to serve the rest of his sentence at home for good behavior.