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Cruise Ship Tilting

January 14, 2012 by · Comments Off on Cruise Ship Tilting 

Cruise Ship TiltingCruise Ship Tilting, The 3,200 passengers on board the Costa Concordia cruise liner were expecting a night of entertainment and relaxation off Italy’s Mediterranean coast.

Instead, at about dinner time, the lights suddenly went out, the ship tilted to one side and an ominous scraping sound was heard. The 1,500-cabin luxury vessel, also carrying about 1,000 crew, had run aground on a sand bar off the tiny island of Giglio. Search continues for missing passengers

Rosalyn Rincon, a member of the cruise ship staff who worked as a dancer, was in the middle of act when the ship ran aground. She was inside a box during a magic show when, she said, “I realized that everything stopped. The music stopped,” she said. Everything on the stage fell on top of people because the ship listed dramatically, said Rincon, 30, of Blackpool, England.

“There was no signal as to what was going on until about 30 minutes into it,” Rincon told CNN.

Her boyfriend, an engineer officer on the vessel, told her that there was a blackout and the ship crashed into something.

“They told us there was a fire,” she said.

Then another blackout occurred, and the ship went into darkness, she said. She put on her life vest in her cabin, she said.

Several minutes later, “we were told to abandon ship,” Rincon said.

Then panic set in, she said.

“The life rafts weren’t opening,” she said. “We had to let the passengers go first.”

The water was rising — like in the movie “Titanic,” Rincon said.

“The ship was going down. The water was rising. And I just thought there was only one thing to do was jump and swim and there was mountains nearby that we could get to,” she said.

“This is the problem: You’ve got 3,000 passengers, you’ve got 2,000 crew members, and and you got only one side of useage of life boats and life rafts” because the ship was listing to one side, Rincon said.

“The water coming up, there’s obviously nothing you can do,” she said. “It was just chaos.”

Crew were left with a choice of jumping into the water and trying to swim ashore — and risk waiting for a life boat.

Rincon was able to get into a rescue boat — after all the passengers were put on life boat or life rafts, she said.

“We were literally thrown into the boat,” Rincon said.

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