Return to Giglio

Last weekend I went back to Giglio Island off the coast of Tuscany to cover the events commemorating last year’s deadly shipwreck.

At 9:45 on the evening of January 13, 2012, Captain Schettino, Commander of the Costa Concordia Cruise Liner took his ship close to the shore of Giglio Island to do what is known as an “inchino”, a bow, to salute a former ship Captain who was from the island.  But Captain Schettino didn’t realize there were a small group of rocks there and hit them, ripping a massive hole into the ship’s hull.

The ship tipped over on its side at the edge of the port of Giglio prompting a complicated rescue operation to get the 4200 passengers to safety.  Thirty-two people died in the wreck, and two bodies have never been recovered.

Returning to Giglio this weekend, the sight of the gigantic hulk of the Costa Concordia at the edge of the harbor took my breath away as it did a year ago.  It is just so enormous.  Now it is surrounded by a group of ships as workers are laboring around the clock to remove the 112,000 ton ship.  The Titan company has moored a floating hotel next to the shipwreck to keep 300 workers aboard who labor on 24 hour shifts to ready the ship for removal.  They have to build a platform under the cruise liner, straighten in out, and refloat it before it can be towed away for destruction. It is the largest ship removal in history and is now estimated to cost 400 million euros ($530 million). Officials involved in the removal say the job will not be completed at least until September of this year and it may take even longer.

Perhaps one of the pleasures of my weekend on Giglio was seeing my friend Kevin Rebello, see my blog post “Kevin’s Puzzle.” Kevin lost his brother Russel Rebello who was a waiter aboard the Costa Concordia.  Through his grace and courage, Kevin has become a sort-of leader/spokesman for the relatives of the dead.  He knows everyone on the island and knows all the relatives and many of the survivors. With them he shares his strength with encouragement and kind gestures.

I spoke to him briefly on the morning before all the commemoration events were set to begin and he told me that his heart was beating fast and he hadn’t slept well the night before thinking he would feel the same agony he felt on hearing of the shipwreck and his brother’s disappearance one year ago.

My colleague Paolo Santalucia interviewed French survivor Genevieve Bongeois who said, “I am here for a very precise reason, I wanted to be here to say goodbye to Russel, he was our waiter on board who served us the first day and he helped me get off the ship, he accompanied me to the lifeboat.  And then he lost his life.”

Clearly, strength, grace and courage run the Rebello family.

The ceremonies began with a tug boat with a crane on it, lowering the rock that was embedded in the hull of the Costa Concordia back to where it was when the Cruise liner smashed into it.  The relatives were then taken near the capsized cruise ship to throw flowers on the water in memory of their loved ones.

It was hard to miss the striking presence of Coast Guard Commander Gregorio De Falco in the port .  He came back to remember the dead and the awful night in which he played such an important role.  De Falco became a national hero in Italy for the way he took charge of the rescue operation and ordered the Captain — who had abandoned  his ship with hundreds of passengers still on-board — to return to the ship. I wrote about that famous conversation on this blog.  See “A Chilling Conversation.”

Speaking to reporters, Commander De Falco brushed off the description of himself as a hero and said, “it is our duty to  save human lives at sea, and we have to do that as much as it is humanly possible for us.”

In the afternoon,  Don Pasquotti, the local priest who opened his church’s doors to the survivors on the fatal night, gave his blessing to a new bronze plaque on the end of the jetty where many of the lifeboats were taken the night of the shipwreck.  The plaque had the names inscribed of the 32 people who died that night.

I was moved to see the father of Erika Fani Soria Molina, touch his daughter’s name and embrace the plaque.  Peruvian Erika Fani was a waitress on board, and like Kevin’s brother she helped passengers into life-boats, gave her life-jacket to an elderly man, and her body was later found without a life-jacket on.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the day was the candle-lit march through the port and down to the end of the jetty.  There the relatives lit 32 Chinese lanterns that puffed up in the breeze and gently floated up over the sea and past the Costa Concordia shipwreck before disappearing into the dark night sky.