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[unable to retrieve full-text content]STOCKHOLM (AP) ? Seafaring tradition holds that the captain should be last to leave a sinking ship. But is it realistic to expect skippers to suppress their survival instinct amid the horror of a maritime disaster? To ask them to stare down death from the bridge, as the lights go out and the water rises, until everyone else has made it to safety?

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ROME (Reuters) ? Italy risks its worst environmental disaster in more than two decades if the 2,400 tonnes of thick fuel in the capsized Costa Concordia pollutes one of the Mediterranean’s most prized and pristine maritime reserves.

Seven days after the 114,500 tonne liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, its vast wreck is shifting precariously on an undersea ledge, threatening to slide further and undermining plans to pump the oil out safely.

The ship keeled over after striking a rock and is now lying on its side on a shelf in about 20 meters of water off the little island of Giglio. Eleven people were killed and 21 are still unaccounted for.

With hopes of finding any survivors all but gone, experts warn that beyond the loss of lives, this could turn into Italy’s worst maritime environmental emergency since the sinking of the Amoco Milford Haven, loaded with 144,000 tonnes of oil, off the coast of Genoa in 1991.

The clean up of that area was completed in 2008, 17 years after the accident, and the Haven shipwreck is still on the seabed, said Luigi Alcaro, head of maritime emergencies at ISPRA, Italy’s government agency for the environment.

“If the Costa Concordia slides further down and the fuel begins seeping into the water, we could be talking years and dozens of millions of euros before it can be cleared up,” Alcaro told Reuters.

The amount of fuel on board the Costa Concordia, 2,380 tonnes of heavy diesel fuel and lubricating oil, is comparable to that carried by a small oil tanker, Environment Minister Corrado Clini told parliament this week.

The fuel tanks appear to be intact for now.

HIGHLY TOXIC

Clini said even a contained leakage would be highly toxic for the flora and fauna in the area, a natural maritime park noted for its clear waters, varied marine life and coral.

The Giglio island is a renowned diving site and the surrounding archipelago is home to more than 700 botanical and animal species, including turtles, dolphins and seals.

Alcaro said the most optimistic scenario would be to stabilize the ship and pump the oil out through a technique known as “hot tap.”

“The oil on the ship is very thick and sticky, so you’d have to drill a hole in the hulk and warm it up to make it more fluid and easier to extract,” he told Reuters.

“That could be done in about a month for the 13 external tanks on the ship. There are another 10 tanks inside, and those are a lot more difficult to reach,” he said.

But if the ship slips deeper underwater, it would actually be better if the tanks ruptured open and the fuel floated up to the surface, he said.

“There would be panic for a couple of weeks of course but a ‘black sea’ of fuel would make it visible and easier to recover. The very worst scenario is having oil slowly leaking out.”

He pointed to the precedent of the cruise ship Sea Diamond, which sank off the Greek island of Santorini in April 2007, saying oil from the wrecked vessel kept seeping into the water for three years at the rate of 30 kg a day.

Tourism is the top industry on Giglio and locals are worried about the potentially devastating impact of pollution.

“If there’s a massive fuel spill, we might as well close everything down, throw away the key and come back in 10 years,” said Massimiliano Botti, 40, owner of the Porta Via restaurant along the Giglio quay. “Environmental damage is what concerns us most. If the oil pollutes the coast, we’re ruined.”

Giglio’s mayor Sergio Ortelli said the recovery of the fuel was likely to start within the next 48 hours, but the wreck shifted further on Friday as the weather worsened, forcing a new suspension in the rescue work.

“We can only hope that the weather remains acceptable, that efforts to stabilize the wreck continue speedily, and that God gives us a hand to preserve what many consider a little Mediterranean paradise,” Fulco Pratesi, founder of the conservation group WWF in Italy, wrote in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

(additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Giglio; Editing by Philip Pullella and Janet Lawrence)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120120/wl_nm/us_italy_ship_environment

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LIMA ? To the Peruvian crew on the Costa Concordia, a job on the Italian cruise ship was an economic plum that earned them a high wage along with free food and lodging while crossing the seas of Europe in style.

One Peruvian crew member was earning almost $1,500 month, six times the minimum wage in Peru.

But the 44 Peruvians who signed up to work aboard the ship didn’t count on the disaster that killed at least one from their ranks when it slammed into a reef and flopped on its side Friday off the Italian island of Giglio. One other Peruvian crew member was still missing Wednesday. Another eight Peruvians were traveling on board as tourists.

Rather than get rich, some of them lost everything.

“He lost his laptop, the money he earned, the clothes he brought from here,” Carmen Burga, mother of 28-year-old crew member Angel Paredes Burga, said Wednesday in Peru where the surviving 42 Peruvian crew members were returning to their homeland with the help of the Peruvian consulate in Italy.

“Now he only has the clothes that the Red Cross gave him,” the mother.

Paredes Burga is an Italian and French teacher who was recruited by the Costa cruise ship company in October.

In Peru, there is a huge demand for cruise ship jobs that command monthly salaries ranging from $712 to $4,000, said Patricia Betalleluz, general manager of CRC-Peru, a company that recruits workers for those positions.

Betalleluz said there are between 8,000 and 10,000 Peruvian applicants for every 1,000 cruise ship job openings.

Burga said her son told her that on the day of the accident he felt the ship crash into the rocks and heard the wail of an emergency siren, prompting him and other crew members to calm passengers and get them onto lifeboats.

Later, when her son boarded one of the lifeboats himself, he fell and fractured his arm, Burga said.

“He told me, ‘I feel like I’m in a movie. Everything happened so fast,’” she said.

Far less lucky is the family of 25-year-old Erika Soria, among the 22 missing crew members. Her parents and sister traveled to Italy to urge authorities to not give up the search. Costa is paying their travel costs.

Soria, the youngest of six brothers and sisters, studied tourism at the Andean University in Cusco, where she was born. She worked for Costa since 2009 and traveled regularly between Italy and Peru.

“My sister was disciplined,” said her brother, Manuel Soria. “When she left the university she began to look for work. Logically they pay little here, even what Costa pays is little, but compared with what she could have earned in Peru any work is better.”

He said his sister earned the equivalent of a bit more than 1,000 euros a month, or nearly $1,500.

Erika’s sister, Berzabeth Soria, said that cruise ship workers told her that on the day of the shipwreck her sister had boarded a lifeboat after helping evacuate passengers. But the small, overcrowded craft flipped and everyone aboard fell into the sea.

“They swam to get to shore, but she never arrived because the boat had already fallen on top of them,” the sister said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_peru_cruise_aground

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The cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, after running aground on the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, on Friday evening. Italian naval divers on Tuesday exploded holes in the hull of a cruise ship that grounded near a Tuscan island to speed the search for 29 missing passengers and crew while the seas remain relatively calm. The search intensified as prosecutors prepared to question the captain, who is accused of causing the wreck that left at least six dead by making a maneuver that the Italian cruise operator said was “unapproved and unauthorized.” (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, after running aground on the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, on Friday evening. Italian naval divers on Tuesday exploded holes in the hull of a cruise ship that grounded near a Tuscan island to speed the search for 29 missing passengers and crew while the seas remain relatively calm. The search intensified as prosecutors prepared to question the captain, who is accused of causing the wreck that left at least six dead by making a maneuver that the Italian cruise operator said was “unapproved and unauthorized.” (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A scuba diver recovers a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian naval divers recover a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian media say five bodies have been found aboard a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, raising the official death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship earlier Tuesday to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The cruise ship Costa Concordia lays on its side after running aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Italian navy divers on Tuesday exploded holes in the hull of a cruise ship that grounded near a Tuscan island to speed the search for 29 missing passengers and crew while the seas remain relatively calm. The search intensified as prosecutors prepared to question the captain, who is accused of causing the wreck that left at least six dead by making a maneuver that the Italian cruise operator said was “unapproved and unauthorized.” (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian navy divers approach the cruise ship Costa Concordia Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, after it ran aground on the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, on Friday evening. Italian naval divers on Tuesday exploded holes in the hull of a cruise ship that grounded near a Tuscan island to speed the search for 29 missing passengers and crew while the seas remain relatively calm. The search intensified as prosecutors prepared to question the captain, who is accused of causing the wreck that left at least six dead by making a maneuver that the Italian cruise operator said was “unapproved and unauthorized.” (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

ROME (AP) ? “You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me?” the Coast Guard officer shouted as the captain of the grounded Costa Concordia sat safe in a life raft and frantic passengers struggled to escape after the ship rammed into a reef off the Tuscan coast.

“It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ‘Abandon ship.’ Now I am in charge.”

The dramatic recording made public Tuesday shows Capt. Francesco Schettino resisted orders to return to his ship to direct the evacuation, saying it was too dark and the ship was tipping perilously.

The exchange came to light as the death toll nearly doubled to 11 after divers pulled the bodies of four men and a woman, all wearing life vests, from the wreckage. Some two dozen people remain missing.

The Costa Concordia had more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board when it slammed into the reef Friday off the tiny island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorized maneuver from the ship’s programmed course ? apparently to show off the luxury liner to the island’s residents.

Schettino has insisted that he stayed aboard until the ship was evacuated. However, the recording of his conversation with Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco makes clear he fled before all passengers were off ? and then defied De Falco’s repeated orders to go back.

“Listen Schettino,” De Falco can be heard shouting in the audio tape. “There are people trapped on board. … You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear?”

But Schettino resisted, saying the ship was listing and he was with his second-in-command in the lifeboat.

“I am here with the rescue boats. I am here. I am not going anywhere. I am here,” he said. “I am here to coordinate the rescue.”

“What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Coordinate the rescue from aboard the ship. Are you refusing?” came the response.

Schettino said he was not refusing, but he still did not return to the ship, saying at one point: “Do you realize it is dark and here we can’t see anything?”

De Falco shouted back: “And so what? You want to go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!”

The exchange also indicates that Schettino did not know anyone had died, with De Falco telling him at one point: “There are already bodies now, Schettino.”

“How many bodies?” Schettino asks in a nervous tone.

“You are the one who has to tell me how many there are!” De Falco barks in response.

Schettino was finally heard on the tape agreeing to reboard. But the Coast Guard has said he never went back, and police arrested him on land several hours later.

The audio, first made available on the website of the Corriere della Sera newspaper and authenticated by the Coast Guard, was broadcast throughout the day on Italian television to a stunned nation.

Jailed since the accident, Schettino appeared Tuesday before a judge in Grosseto, where he was questioned for three hours. The judge ordered him held under house arrest, his lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, told reporters, and later Italian media said he had returned to his home near Naples.

Criminal charges including manslaughter and abandoning ship are expected to be filed by prosecutors in coming days. He faces 12 years in prison for the abandoning ship charge alone.

At the hearing, Leporatti said the captain gave his version of events, insisting that after the initial crash into the reefs he had maneuvered the ship close to shore in a way that “saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.”

The lawyer said urine and hair samples were taken from Schettino, apparently to determine if he might have consumed alcohol or used drugs before the accident.

Tanned and looking younger than his 52 years, Schettino has worked for 11 years for the ship’s Italian operator, Costa Crociere SpA, achieving the rank of captain in 2006. He hails from Meta di Sorrento in the Naples area, which produces many of Italy’s ferry and cruise boat captains. He attended the Nino Bixio merchant marine school near Sorrento.

The five bodies discovered Tuesday were adults in their 50s or 60s, each wearing the orange vests that passengers use, indicating they were not crew members, said a Coast Guard spokesman, Cmdr. Filippo Marini. Their nationalities were not immediately released.

They were discovered after Italian naval divers exploded holes in the hull of the grounded cruise ship, trying to speed up the search for the missing. Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the holes would help divers enter the wreck more easily. “We are rushing against time,” he said.

Before the grim finding, authorities had said 25 passengers and four crew members were missing. They include Americans Jerry and Barbara Heil of White Bear Lake, Minn., as well as 14 Germans, six Italians, four French, a Hungarian, an Indian and a Peruvian.

Mediterranean waters in the area were relatively calm Tuesday with waves just a foot high, but they were expected to reach nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters) Wednesday, according to meteorological forecasts.

A Dutch shipwreck salvage firm said it would take its engineers and divers two to four weeks to extract the 500,000 gallons of fuel aboard the ship. The safe removal of the fuel has become a priority second only to finding the missing, as the wreckage site lies in a maritime sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Preliminary phases of the fuel extraction could begin as early as Wednesday if approved by Italian officials, the company said.

Smit, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said no fuel had leaked and the ship’s tanks appeared intact. While there is a risk the ship could shift in larger waves, it has so far been relatively stable perched on top of rocks near Giglio’s port.

Smit’s operations manager, Kees van Essen, said the company was confident the fuel could safely be extracted using pumps and valves to vacuum the oil out to waiting tanks.

“But there are always environmental risks in these types of operations,” he told reporters.

The company said any discussion about the fate of the ship ? whether it is removed in one piece or broken up ? would be decided by Costa Crociere and its insurance companies.

Miami-based Carnival Corp., which owns the Italian operator, estimated that preliminary losses from having the Concordia out of commission through 2012 would be between $85 million and $95 million, along with other costs. The company’s share price slumped more than 16 percent Monday.

Carnival said its deductible on damage to the ship was approximately $30 million. In addition, the company faces a deductible of $10 million for third-party personal injury liability claims.

Carnival said other costs related to the grounding can’t yet be determined.

Associated Press

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ROME ? Rescue crews say a rescue operation on a cruise ship that ran aground and capsized off Tuscany has been suspended after the Costa Concordia shifted a few inches (centimeters) in rough seas.

Fears are mounting that if the ship shifts significantly, the 500,000 gallons of fuel may begin to leak into the pristine waters around the island of Giglio.

Fire department spokesman Luca Cari said the ship had shifted a few centimeters vertically and horizontally Monday because of the seas. He said an underwater search for 16 people still unaccounted for from the 4,200 on board was suspended immediately.

Six people were killed when the ship ran aground Friday. Costa has said the captain, who has been jailed, made an unauthorized deviation from the ship’s planned course.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ROME (AP) ? The captain of the cruise ship that capsized off Tuscany made an unauthorized, unapproved deviation from its programmed course, a “human error” that led to the grounding of the vessel, the chief executive of the ship’s Italian owner said Monday. At least six people died in the incident.

The comments from Costa Crociere chairman and CEO Pier Luigi Foschi ramped up the pressure on the captain, who already is under investigation by authorities for suspected manslaughter and as well as allegations he abandoned ship before the passengers were safe, violating the Italian navigation code.

The Costa Concordia ran into a reef Friday night and capsized into the port area of Giglio, sparking a frantic evacuation of the 4,200 people onboard. Coast Guard officials have expressed concern that the ship might slip off the rocks where it is currently perched.

On Monday, the rescue operation was called off as weather worsened and a sixth body was found. Foschi said it wasn’t because the ship had shifted but because divers heard “sounds” coming from inside and didn’t know what was causing them. Sixteen people remain missing.

Foschi said the company, which is owned by the world’s largest cruiseline, Carnival Corp., stood by the captain, Francesco Schettino, and would provide him with legal assistance. But he said the company disassociated itself from his behavior.

Costa ships have their routes programmed, and alarms go off when they deviate, the chief executive said in a press conference.

“This route was put in correctly. The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a maneuver by the commander that was unapproved, unauthorized and unknown to Costa,” he said.

Schettino has insisted he didn’t leave the liner early, telling Mediaset television that he had done everything he could to save lives.

“We were the last ones to leave the ship,” he said.

Foschi said the liner had passed all safety and technical tests in its 2011 evaluation. He added that the company’s main concern was the safety and well-being of the passengers and crew, as well as to ensure fuel doesn’t leak out from the upended hull into the pristine waters off the island of Giglio.

There were 500,000 gallons of fuel on board, in 17 separate tanks, Foschi said.

“There are no signs of pollution” to date, but officials are on high alert in case the ship suddenly shifts due to worsening weather conditions, Foschi said. Sensors have been put in place to track the movements of the ship.

Questions have been swirling about why the ship had navigated so close to the dangerous reefs and rocks that jut off Giglio’s eastern coast, amid suspicions the captain may have ventured too close while carrying out a maneuver to entertain tourists on the island.

Residents of Giglio said they had never seen the Costa come so close to the dangerous “Le Scole” reef area.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_italy_cruise_aground

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