A Concordia Crew Member Posts on Facebook

[ChuckinSC]

This is a very interesting thread, starting from the 1st post attributed to a FB post by the Guest Services Manager. As you can see, we've only been on 4 cruises; however it never occured to me what would actually happen had the ship been listing. I can remember no safety drill where there was any mention of the "what ifs" should an escape on our side of the ship not be possible and having only half of all the life boats available on the OTHER side of the ship. To me, it seems almost a miracle there was not more loss of life considering the darkness, no electricity, etc.. I am willing to give the overall crew a commendation at this point. Also, I remember that a crew cannot act on its own without a command from the Captain or First Officer. Lacking that, I can understand why they were reluctant to lower boats. JMHO. Thank you.

[oskidunker]

He even took one final walk through with water up to his chest to be sure. BIG DIFFERENCE. the Captain could have waited. He could have jumped off and swam to shore if the ship started to sink.

 

Hard to believe the second in command did not take over and demand the other officers remain on the ship. The must have never been in the military.

[TheBestIsYetToCome]

Would having the drill earlier meant more survivors? We can't answer that, but I'll put my opinion in here that I think it's doubtful much would've changed. The fact is you really just have to be able to think and rationalize your way through such an event.

 

I think one piece of the muster drill is useful regardless of what happens during the drill -- most passengers will have at least physically gotten themselves to and been at their muster location at least once before an actual emergency.

[Aplmac]

Should they do a full muster every time passengers embark?

That would be the safest, but I think people would complain.

Not a full muster,no -but certainly the new arrivals.

 

 

We had aircraft issues at Gatwick, and so arrived 6+ hrs. late into Palma de Mallorca

and so we missed the routine muster drill.

Those of us on the late flight were given our own special muster drill next morning.

Not so difficult to accomplish, if the ship wants to do it.

 

Rest assured, all cruise ships will be doing this from now on. ;)

Before the mooring ropes are released! No more "within 24 hrs."

 

 

This Concordia wreck is a crossroads in cruise history, kinda like how Titanic was.

Things are gonna sharpen up lots!

You just wait and see...on your next cruise!

.

[oskidunker]

Even when off duty? Just curious

[parrot_head]

I think the people should have been on lifeboats way before the listing was so extreme..

IMO , thats where the ball was dropped...

[Misten]

Even when off duty? Just curious

 

I don't know, but reading the bit below, it might depend on the country?

 

This is from a US site:

"...Most ships would allow moderate and discreet consumption of alcoholic beverages, as long as it was not in public, and was not interfering with work. With the more recent laws requiring post-incident drug and alcohol testing, the no alcohol regulations are more strictly enforced. Passengers are not crew members, and are allowed to consume alcohol. On foreign ships it is my understanding that there are more liberal rules concerning use of alcohol..."

http://www.captainmcd.com/id13.html

[frito58]

Would like to think this is accurate but why would all of the people that were onboard have such a completly differnt account of the whole thing and why were people airlifted off and the capt was gone. Just sayin.

[DFD1]

This is no indicator, but still interesting. Captain Albert Schoonerbeck (sp), the HAL captain who posts a daily blog and just passed 30 years with HAL, has recently written in his blog that he never drinks on board.

 

Also, Captain Bowland, of the Eurodam, told us last week that he toasts passengers with ginger ale and does not drink while on board.

 

One Celebrity captain was arrested on the west coast a while back after a spot inspection.

 

Seems to me that a drinking captain would cast doubts about the management of the cruise line.

[nosnoop]

"Unfortunately I don't have my nametag to photograph, because I lost at sea, along with my camera! My name is Katia Keyvanian, I am The GSM (Guest Service Manager) embarked on the 13th of January to substitute my colleague on the Concordia......

It is not true that the captain was first to leave the ship. I was on the last boat and he remained attached to the railing of deck 3, while the ship was sinking....."Shame on you!!""

 

This just came across as a defensive crew member with a bruised ego.

You can cry shame all you want, but as you left in the "last boat", and the captain left at 11:40pm in another "last boat", there were still hundreds of passengers waiting to be rescued as seen here!

[ObscureAllure]

Would like to think this is accurate but why would all of the people that were onboard have such a completly differnt account of the whole thing and why were people airlifted off and the capt was gone. Just sayin.

 

EVERYONE has had entirely different stories. Even the videos show different stories...

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dayenu]

This Katya is quoted by BBC ( I Googled her name) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16577739

 

"We evacuated 4,000 people from a ship lying on its side in the dark, in less than two hours! Incompetent people would not have been able to do that," Katia Keyvanian, a hostess on the ship, is quoted as saying."

 

- and of course, when something happens, people start taking sides, and the media is in a hurry to produce news and gossip before their competitors, so who knows what exactly happened.

 

Katia only talks about evacuation, not the captain's decision to wave to someone on the island, not how soon the evacuation began, nothing about 29 people missing and 6 bodies, did she see the whole picture, or only her own small part in all of this?

[dbcruzin]

sounds very fishy, lots of the statements do not match with what is already know/reported.

 

How would the mayor of Giglio board a sinking ship? Why?? The coast guard reported that it had to take over the evacuation from the captain and that he was ordered 3 times to return to the ship. Why would you undress a person in a lifeboat. There isn't any room and where did you get the blankets in a lifeboat???

 

Many guest have, independent of each other reported the many problems with the evacuations.

 

This sounds like some very twisted person posting on FB.

 

Saftey procedures dictate that you remove the cold wet clothing to help prevent hypothermia. At crew races we actually use garbage bags and a blanket to wrap the victim, to help reduce wind also.

[hospital]

Sakdad makes a good point.

No matter how many drills/rules etc a ship has, no one can anticipate the reactions of 4,000 frightened people in a real situation.

 

Also, claiming , as another poster states, 'that the captain blew it' , let us wait for the investigation before making sweeping statements. Perhaps, the computers lost all power leaving the ship out of control. Who knows?

 

I totally agree, you can practice everyday, but when the real thing happens you can not predict what untrained people will do (snoozer, drinkers etc at the safety drill) especially if they feel their life is in jeopardy. I imagine some of the confusion came from the fact that the ship listed and there was no access to those life boats so they had to tell people to go to the other side. Can you imagine how scary that must have been, to think your going to be put on a lifeboat and be saved only to be told you now need to reach the other side. I'm sure the question of why the Captain didn"t call a mayday will be asked and I'm sure there will be no answer that will satisfy everyone especially the families that lost loved ones. I'm sure not all the crew members were derelict in their duties, so that's probably why she (Katia) is so upset. I think we need to just be thankful that the majority of the people DID get off the ship no matter the way and pray for the families that lost their loved ones.

[Aus Traveller]

This Katya is quoted by BBC ( I Googled her name) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16577739

 

"We evacuated 4,000 people from a ship lying on its side in the dark, in less than two hours! Incompetent people would not have been able to do that," Katia Keyvanian, a hostess on the ship, is quoted as saying."

 

- and of course, when something happens, people start taking sides, and the media is in a hurry to produce news and gossip before their competitors, so who knows what exactly happened.

 

Katia only talks about evacuation, not the captain's decision to wave to someone on the island, not how soon the evacuation began, nothing about 29 people missing and 6 bodies, did she see the whole picture, or only her own small part in all of this?

Agreed. And did she see the many people who felt they had to jump overboard and swim because there were no liftboats for them. We are reading that the last evacuations were at 6am - much more than two hours after a collision that occured around 9.30pm. I think Katia is just reporting from what she saw and it does not agree with the many other reports.

[ghstudio]

Agreed. And did she see the many people who felt they had to jump overboard and swim because there were no liftboats for them. We are reading that the last evacuations were at 6am - much more than two hours after a collision that occured around 9.30pm. I think Katia is just reporting from what she saw and it does not agree with the many other reports.

 

I am sure there were crew members who performed heroic efforts and really did save the lives of many..and they should be praised, thanked, etc. However there are an equal number of reports of crew that wasn't there to help folks find the decks and the lifeboats; there was the missing lifeboat driver; and so on. It's logical that there are two sides to the story.....because different members of the crew did very different things in the chaos of the hour.

 

The true hero in saving the lives of so many was......and you're not going to like this.....the captain who got the ship to shallow ground so it didn't capsize. Forget why the accident happened.....had the ship stayed in deeper water, many more lives would have perished and clearly the crew would not have had the 2 hours....it could well have been minutes.

[Aus Traveller]

I am sure there were crew members who performed heroic efforts and really did save the lives of many..and they should be praised, thanked, etc. However there are an equal number of reports of crew that wasn't there to help folks find the decks and the lifeboats; there was the missing lifeboat driver; and so on. It's logical that there are two sides to the story.....because different members of the crew did very different things in the chaos of the hour.

 

The true hero in saving the lives of so many was......and you're not going to like this.....the captain who got the ship to shallow ground so it didn't capsize. Forget why the accident happened.....had the ship stayed in deeper water, many more lives would have perished and clearly the crew would not have had the 2 hours....it could well have been minutes.

That is true, and they probably would not have had six or seven hours to evacuate people. By the way I can't work out why two hours is constantly being quoted, when the last people were evacuated at 6am (around 8 hours after the collision).

 

I still would not call the Captain a hero for grounding the ship. It certain was a great decision, but does not negate the bad decision that took the ship to where the collision occurred.

[Activated95b]

Who do we believe?

 

"The chairman and CEO of Genoa-based Costa Cruises, Pier Luigi Foschi, says his company maintains high security, safety and quality standards. In the case of the grounded Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, Foschi said he was not aware of 'serious' human errors, but says his company had never cut costs at the expense of safety"

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/jan/16/costa-cruises-ship-safety-video

 

From a purely financial standpoint - the costs of excellent safety equipment and training are extremely tiny when compared the the value of the investments they protect. And remember that at least some of the extra expense in better safety equipment and training can be recovered through lower insurance premiums.

 

And there is the liability issue to remember - the typical payout in a wrongful death lawsuit is upwards of $10 million. And you can buy a lot of safety equipment and training for that same amount of money.

 

When your assets cost \upwards of $400 million each - the bean counters tend to be the people telling you to spend money on safety.

[africapurserguy]

Exactly WHEN do these happen? I have been a passenger many times on different lines and WORKED for months on ships as crew and have NEVER seen this happen once! Not saying it doesn't but I have never seen, heard of or experienced a whole passenger evacution safety drill....ever.

 

Sake Dad from a crew member that has been onboard for more than 10 years and have done many sea rescue and survival courses and done many many drills over the years I can make some stuff clear for you.

 

Crew drills take place every 7 days, Guest drills must take place within 24 hrs of the guests boarding and then there are certain drills that need to be completed on rotation either once every 3 or 6 months. All this drill procedure should be available on the MCA maritime law website. THis is all recorded and all crew MUST sign that they have participated in most cases.

 

You were asking when we fill the lifeboats, this is one of the drills that need to be practiced every 3 months and as we don't use guests for this purposes we use crew to fill a different Muster station every time we do this drill and then we evacuate the whole muster station to that specific muster stations lifeboats, we fill all those life boats to the brim with the legal 150 people. We also witness a inflatable life raft inflation and also how to deploy every 3 months. So I hope this answers the question if this is actually practice.

 

I believe that the Captain is in charge and that he is most likely to be blamed for the accident but I also believe that the crew would have very well trained and would have handled the emergency as good as they could in the very difficult conditions!

[Misten]

The true hero in saving the lives of so many was......and you're not going to like this.....the captain who got the ship to shallow ground so it didn't capsize. Forget why the accident happened.....had the ship stayed in deeper water, many more lives would have perished and clearly the crew would not have had the 2 hours....it could well have been minutes.

 

I agree in that whatever the cause of the accident the Captain made the very best possible decision under the circumstances to get the ship to shallow ground.

 

Any captain surely feels totally devastated when lives are lost on a ship under command whatever the cause, and IF it was an error of judgement (and does not turn out to have been a malfunction - things can go wrong even with the best technology on planes, at sea, in space) that caused the initial incident then I can't even imagine how terrible he would/will feel, and probably would/will do for the rest of his days.

 

Thank goodness I'll never be in that position, I truly doubt I'd be able to cope with it.

 

Human error, poor decisions, good decisions, moments of cowardice, moments of bravery, are (sadly) a part of what and who we all are, and the best of technology is not perfect either...because human error has a part in that too.

[frito58]

Well one thing is for sure , he will never sail a cruise ship again after all of this. Even if he is found innocent . I have been very out spoken on this , I maybe I have said too much , I salute all of those brave kids and crew that did so much to save all the people that did get off. As you said maybe this will be a lesson as to something that will never happen again and I hope we find those missing safe and sound.

[Misten]

Well one thing is for sure , he will never sail a cruise ship again after all of this. Even if he is found innocent . I have been very out spoken on this , I maybe I have said too much , I salute all of those brave kids and crew that did so much to save all the people that did get off. As you said maybe this will be a lesson as to something that will never happen again and I hope we find those missing safe and sound.

 

I think what you have said here (as quoted) is exactly right, very well put and reflects what all of us are feeling and hoping deep down.

[frito58]

I think what you have said here (as quoted) is exactly right, very well put and reflects what all of us are feeling and hoping deep down.

 

Thanks I was hoping it came across the right way:)

[Misten]

Thanks I was hoping it came across the right way:)

 

It did :)

 

You have some good photos there!

[funfamilyof6]

I ran across this today on Facebook...

It is not true that the captain was first to leave the ship. I was on the last boat and he remained attached to the railing of deck 3, while the ship was sinking. :confused:

 

On CNN today... http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t1#/video/world/2012/01/17/early-cruise-ship-transcript.cnn

 

After seeing this today, it's hard to believe if this facebook posting is even true. The captain was not the last one off the ship!