A stricken Italian cruise liner shifted on its rocky resting place on Monday as worsening weather disrupted an increasingly despairing hunt for any survivors among some 16 people still missing. As the Costa Concordia's owners blamed their captain for veering shorewards on Friday in a bravura "salute" to residents of a Tuscan island, the giant ship slid a little, threatening to plunge all its gigantic carcass and 2,300 tonnes of fuel below the Mediterranean waters of the surrounding nature reserve.
The slippage caused a few hours suspension in efforts to find anyone still alive after three days in the capsized hull, resting on jagged slope outside a picturesque harbour on the island of Giglio. Six bodies have already been found. Most of the 4,200 passengers and crew survived, despite hours of chaos.
The 114,500-tonne ship, one of the biggest passenger vessels ever to be wrecked, foundered after striking a rock, just as dinner was being served on Friday night. It quickly rolled on its side, revealing a long gouge below the waterline. Fire-fighters' spokesman Luca Cari said there were still small movements of the vessel but they were not considered dangerous. However, night-time searches would be suspended.
Another senior fire-fighter, Luciano Roncalli, told Reuters that all the unsubmerged areas of the liner had been searched, indicating faint hopes of finding more survivors in the flooded and upturned maze of luxurious state rooms and tennis courts, bars and spas that are now lolling beneath the sea. Environment Minister Corrado Clini said he would declare a state of emergency because of the risk that the ship's fuel would leak into the pristine Tuscan Archipelago National Park. No major spillage has so far been detected.
Should rougher seas dislodge the wreck and cause it to sink or break up, that could scupper any hopes for the owners, a unit of Florida's Carnival Corp, of salvaging a liner which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build just six years ago.
Investigators say the ship was far too close to the shore and its owners, Costa Cruises, said the captain, who has been arrested, had carried out the rash manoeuvre to "make a bow" to people on the island, who included a retired Italian admiral. The skipper denies charges of manslaughter and his lawyer has said his actions had saved many lives.
The father of the ship's head waiter told Reuters that his son had telephoned him before the accident to say the crew would salute him by blowing the ship's whistle as they passed close by Giglio, where both the waiter, Antonello Tievoli, and his 82-year-old father Giuseppe live. "The ship obviously came too close," the elder Tievoli said. "I don't know if Antonello asked the captain to come near, but the responsibility is always the captain's."
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