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[suspenseful music playing]
[man 1] But is there water coming in?
[man 2] Like hell there is. I'm on my way down now.
[woman] We had not had a vacation since having a baby.
I think I went to John and I said this would be a really good time for us
to do this amazing trip that we've talked about doing for so long,
which was a huge deal for us.
The night of Friday 13th, I'd been on board for four months as a dancer.
I had no idea something was gonna happen.
-[upbeat music playing on ship] -[suspenseful music continues]
One moment, you are celebrating and chilling with your family.
The next moment, you're just there,
powerless.
-[low rumbling] -[screaming]
[clattering]
It felt like the ground under our feet opened.
People were grabbing onto the walls and grabbing onto each other.
[woman] This is straight out of a scene of Titanic, completely.
[man] Stories of fear and panic from the cruise ship Costa Concordia.
Let's be honest,
you have thought about it every time you get on a plane or a cruise ship.
What happens if something goes wrong?
Well, it happened.
[dramatic orchestral music playing]
Every time you close your eyes, you see something from the night.
Just literally back in the most terrifying moment
you've ever experienced with your family.
[man] God, what have I done?
[music fades out]
[determined music playing]
[man] We'd been to Europe before, but never together.
So it'd definitely be our longest vacation together,
our furthest vacation together.
Our daughter, Lila, was 14 months old.
so we felt like it was a good opportunity for us to do a really big trip together.
I'm pretty sure we packed a suitcase of toys, diapers, diaper wipes,
you know, the whole thing. We had so much stuff.
We were going to Paris, Switzerland, Venice, Barcelona.
Ultimately, we would end on a cruise ship.
[John] Yeah, I think that was a big part of why we chose this vacation.
We took endless photos and videos,
made a ton of incredible memories.
[music softens]
[woman] I always wanted to go to Italy.
[camera shutter clicking]
That was, like, the highest on my bucket list,
but I didn't really know I was going on a cruise ship.
I hadn't told her that part yet. [chuckles] Just told her the Italy part,
but the cruise ship was gonna be a special surprise.
[elegant string music playing]
We had been dating for about three years at that time.
The idea was, at some point, I was going to ask her to marry me.
If you ask someone to marry you,
you'd want the most romantic place you could find,
and on this journey, there was quite a few places to choose from.
This would just be that moment where everything clicks.
[camera shutter clicks]
She can't say no, right? If you ask 'em in the perfect place?
Everybody thinks that, if you're gonna do it, right?
[woman] When I arrived,
I was amazed with how big and enormous the ship looked.
[lighthearted music playing]
At the time, I was 17.
My mother wanted to celebrate her 50th birthday.
She booked for me, my boyfriend at the time,
and her childhood best friend, Luisa.
Since I was very little, we did everything together.
I was about seven years old when she was diagnosed with cancer.
But a few months before our departure,
her cancer was in remission.
This was definitely another big reason to celebrate her birthday.
The first thing we did was explore the… the ship.
-[music fades out] -[gulls squawking]
I knew that it was going to be the largest ship I've ever seen.
I still remember stepping into the ship for the first time
and just being overwhelmed by how extravagant everything was.
[enchanting string music playing]
Very opulent. Chandeliers everywhere.
It seemed like everything was either made of gold or glass or marble.
Very sort of old Italy.
You know, just everything shining and perfect.
[Nicholas] I didn't know exactly what room I was gonna get when I booked it.
At that time, the trip was quite expensive,
and I was a… a student.
But he made sure he got the best room that we could have.
I was so happy because we got the balcony, and we have this beautiful view.
We walked on the balcony,
and Nick pointed out,
"Hey look, about a floor or two below us is the lifeboats."
The lifeboats. [chuckles]
And I thought, "Well, I'll take a picture of that."
[camera shutter clicks]
I've never been on a cruise ship,
and I thought, "Well, say if something like the Titanic happens…"
And I said, "It's not gonna be like the Titanic."
"I've been on cruises before. It's gonna be fantastic. You're gonna love it."
[foreboding music playing]
[woman, in Italian] Kids, don't you dare run away from here!
[in English]
[Patricia] When we first got on board, it was pretty amazing.
We met with someone that asked us
what we wanted to do for the rest of the week.
We set up a spa day, and it just was so exciting, right?
This was all happening so fast.
We had just gotten to our room. Now we're walkin' around.
As we're walkin', I'm taking pictures of everything.
[enchanting piano music playing]
[Meghan] One of the amazing things about cruising
is that it's going to provide you with everything.
And so for me, especially as a new mom,
that made it really easy.
[John] There were endless restaurants of every type,
you know, theaters, shows, casino.
The only difficulty, really, is how to spend your time
in terms of how many choices there are.
I remember an ice cream bar where you could make your own sundaes,
and I feel like it was 24 hours a day,
you could just eat ice cream if you wanted.
[Nicholas] This was back when The Walking Dead was kinda big,
and so we'd always play a game.
You know, "If zombies attacked, where would you go,
and what weapon would you use to either fight or get out?"
Like, "Where would you go? Would you go out that way or that way?"
And if it's a slow zombie, where's the weapon you can use to stop it?
When he would do this to me,
the first time, I told him, "I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention."
-And he's like, "Wrong!" -Exactly.
-"Wrong!"
"That's where you messed up."
Slowly I started to really pay attention to my surroundings.
[man, in Italian] It was a beautiful evening.
The weather was clear, a little cold because it was January.
However, it was a quiet evening like any other.
[gentle music playing]
I worked with Costa for about 43 years.
You always work on a ship.
Christmas, New Year's, Easter, Saturday and Sunday.
I felt more at home on board than at home.
About 800 people worked for me on the Costa Concordia.
[in English] So by the night of Friday 13th January,
I'd been working on board for four months as a dancer.
At that point, it was absolutely my dream job.
It was literally heaven on earth.
Getting to explore the world. I was in the best shape of my life.
I had great friends.
It was magic.
[applause]
[in Italian] On behalf of the management of Costa and the entire crew,
I am pleased and honored to welcome you on board.
[Rose, in English] I met Captain Schettino a few times.
The first time I met him was in the crew elevator.
The only thing I kind of knew about him
was that he was a newer captain to this ship.
[Schettino] Enjoy your cruise.
[applause]
One time, my mum came to visit on board,
and he was talking with my mum,
and he was saying
that he was gonna go fishing on the island with one of his friends
but not to tell anyone
because he wasn't actually allowed to do that.
And so there was also this, like,
"Oh, he's working the system" kind of thing.
-[suspenseful music playing] -[clock ticking]
[Manrico, in Italian] That night, around nine, the captain calls me.
[phone ringing]
A few days earlier, the head waiter had asked the captain
if the ship could do a sail-by salute close to Giglio Island
since both his sister and his mother lived on the island.
He asked me if I would like to join him on the bridge for the sail-by.
To me, it sounded a bit unusual, because,
as it was night, all dark, there wasn't much to see.
But, as this was the captain's decision,
we complied.
[phone ringing]
[in English]
[Stefania] That night, me and my boyfriend, Andrea,
decided to go up on the deck of the pool.
As I opened the door,
I felt this fresh breeze.
Everything was dark,
but it was light up by the few lights.
Sparkles just reflect on the water.
I lean out. I was watching the sea,
and Andrea, who was behind me, he hugged me.
He said, "It feels like the Titanic."
At that moment, I…
Actually, I…
I felt a little strange.
But it's crazy, right?
So you… you just… leave that… that thought behind.
And then I received this call from my mother.
She said, "We are here in the restaurant."
"They are beginning to serve dinner, so please come on, join us."
It was kind of an important dinner
because, at midnight,
it would be her birthday.
[John] That night, we had a really nice dinner.
[Meghan] Can you say hi to Daddy?
[John] But following dinner, with Lila being one, it was time for bed.
We went back to the cabin and put her down.
[Meghan] We just did our traditional bedtime routine.
Getting on my pajamas.
[John] I come out of the shower, have my boxer shorts on, getting into bed.
And I remember laying down
and actually verbalizing, "I am exhausted."
Um, that was such a long day.
[suspenseful string music playing]
[phone ringing]
[in Italian] As we are getting closer to the island,
I see that we're getting too close,
so I mention this to the head waiter who's standing next to me.
I said, "I think we're getting a little too close."
Suddenly, the shore became clearly visible.
[Rose, in English] On this particular night,
with my friends, we had the half-hour break.
I was dating one of the barmen from Peru,
who was working in the Londra Bar at the back of Deck 5,
at the back of the ship, and I wanted to see him,
so I said to everybody else,
I was like, "Do you wanna go get a cappuccino in the Londra Bar?"
And so everyone was like, "Oh yeah, let's go do that."
[in Italian] As the ship got closer to the island,
what surprised me quite a bit was that the ship never slowed down.
[clock ticking]
In that moment, I started to panic.
[in English]
[creaking]
[in Italian] The head waiter tells me, "No, look."
"The captain knows very well what he is doing."
And then he didn't finish the sentence.
[low rumbling]
-[clattering] -[screaming]
[children shouting]
[creaking]
[in English] I heard and felt a sound and a vibration.
For me, the room starting to slowly shift just was incredibly unnerving.
[eerie music building]
You know, my body tensed up, and I knew something was terribly wrong.
We heard a loud screeching sound.
[metallic scraping]
And then the noise changes from a screech to a scraping noise,
and that's a terrifying noise to hear.
[dishes crashing]
Can you imagine a thousand plates breaking in one time?
I was so scared because the sound was really high.
[plates smashing]
And all this boiling water from the braiser starts falling down.
I was one of 180 chefs.
No one knows what's happening.
I thought it's rough sea, and it's gonna be all right.
And after a few seconds…
no, it's something not right.
[alarm ringing]
[in Italian] I turned and saw
that the ship had crashed into the rocks on the left side.
You could literally see the water entering the ship's hull.
[alarm ringing]
[in English]
[in Italian] We were all shocked and unable to move.
[commotion]
[man 1, in Italian] Calm down.
-[in English] It's better if you sit down. -[man 2] Sit down?
-[woman] Sit down? -[man 1] Yes.
[Stefania] Everyone was freaking out.
And I was looking at my mum that was right in front of me.
She looked at me and said, "It's okay."
"Everything okay."
[commotion]
She was trying to do everything
to make me feel like nothing bad was happening,
but I knew it was.
-[clattering] -[shouting]
We're just standing there, looking at what to do next.
[Patricia] I quickly stopped having any emotion,
and I looked at Nicholas, and he said,
"We need to get out of here, and we need to get out of here now."
[Meghan] He said, "Did you hear that? Did you feel that?"
I definitely felt panic,
and so my body sort of goes into this crisis-response mode.
You know, I've been accused of being an unemotional person,
but at that moment, it was just pure survival
and just trying to lead my family out of this thing.
[tense music playing]
I yelled to Meghan. I said, "Grab the baby."
Like, "We've gotta go."
Seeing him react the way that he did,
I immediately felt dread.
I grabbed Lila out of the crib in the middle of a deep sleep.
At that point, I had not grabbed the pacifier.
She was crying immediately.
[baby crying]
[John] I threw on jeans, but that was it.
I didn't have a shirt on. Meghan had Lila in her arms.
[Meghan] And we ran out the door.
[baby wailing]
[Manrico, in Italian] As soon as the impact occurred,
my first thought is to go and see what happened down there.
And near the machine room,
the chief engineer comes out, all alarmed and scared.
He tells me it's a disaster downstairs, water entering at full force.
I felt helpless.
[alarm ringing]
[in English]
[baby crying]
[John] We burst out the door into the hallway.
I was thinking the ship was just gonna be slowly tipping over,
and in my head, It was just a race to get to the lifeboat deck.
And so we started just racing up the stairs as fast as we could,
Meghan and the baby behind me.
[baby wailing]
[Meghan] The adrenaline starts rushing. Panic was hitting.
Lila's been crying the whole time.
We were taking stairs two by two,
and I was holding the baby, trying to keep up.
I was struggling.
I felt physically sick.
I said, "I think I'm gonna throw up."
John said, "Just throw up and keep running."
"Just don't stop. Just keep going."
[baby wailing]
[Patricia] We got to the fourth level deck where the lifeboats are.
And there was a couple that passed out life vests to everybody.
At this point, it was only a few people,
and there was this ice of anxiety that you have
with no one giving you information.
No one was instructing us what to do.
[Nicholas] And right then, the lights went out.
[screaming, shouting]
[John] It was just pitch black.
Suddenly I'm being separated from Meghan and Lila.
[baby wailing]
I don't know if it was three stairs or 13 stairs,
but they were not next to me.
[low rumbling]
[Meghan] I was scared,
and I remember yelling for him.
"John! John!"
[John] Yelling, following each other's voices.
It felt like an eternity.
When we did reconnect, I remember saying,
"Just grab my waistline on my jeans and don't let go."
I had Lila in my arms and just continued up two steps at a time.
[Manrico, in Italian] The chief engineer came to the bridge with me.
Together with Captain Schettino, they open the ship plans
and try to understand the damage the ship has really suffered.
[alarm ringing]
[in English]
[in Italian] On the bridge, the sound of the impact was hardly felt,
while the people who were in the restaurant in the back area,
they felt the full force of the impact.
-[beep] -[alarm ringing]
[in English]
-[chatter] -[baby crying]
[man over PA] Your attention, please.
I speak on behalf of the captain.
We're currently in a blackout as we're experiencing electrical failure.
At this point, the situation is under control,
and our technicians are working to solve the situation.
We'll give you further information as it becomes available.
They continued to say things like, "Don't worry, everything is fine."
-"Go back to your room." -"Go back to your room."
[woman over PA] We have made an announcement on behalf of the captain.
We kindly ask you to go back to your cabin.
I kept thinkin', "I'm not gonna go back to my room."
-No way. -There's no way.
I don't even know if I could find the room at that point, to be honest.
[Manrico, in Italian] As I am going downstairs,
I see that the passengers are very scared,
and they are asking me what has happened.
And, not to go against what the captain has said,
I couldn't give them a different version as I would only do more damage.
The inability to act. This is the problem.
[somber string music playing]
[Manoj, in English] We don't know what's happening.
Every announcement we heard, we believe.
We heard, okay, there is a minor fault.
The captain, whatever he said, that's the final word.
And I heard the chef saying, "Oh, nobody… Don't move. Don't move."
"Just stay there where you are and be ready for the dinner service."
-[shouting] -[baby crying]
[creaking]
[John] It felt like it was a long time before the lights came back on.
We're still running up the stairs.
And then finally we entered out into the deck where the lifeboats were.
[John] Hundreds and hundreds of people shoulder to shoulder.
[Meghan] You're hit with a wall of panic.
[commotion]
People yelling, arguing, trying to decide what to do, what's going on.
Every crew member saying,
"There's been an electrical failure or issue. We're not evacuating."
[baby crying]
[Meghan] Lila is in my arms, still crying.
I was a new mother,
and so the loss of control of
not having a way to help her…
My primary focus was on the nurturing and comfort of my child.
[John] It was very hard hearing and seeing Meghan struggle.
-[chatter] -[baby crying]
[Meghan] And at that point, I remember looking John in the eye
and saying, "I want to get off the ship."
-[alarm ringing] -[chatter]
[Manrico, in Italian] In this endless period of general confusion,
the captain was often on the phone with the company crisis coordinator.
[alarm ringing]
[in English]
[in Italian] They didn't tell the truth because, in my opinion,
the captain was fully panicking.
He couldn't understand what had happened.
[tense music droning]
-[yelling] -[clattering]
[Stefania, in English] In the restaurant,
we looked at the crew for some direction on what to do,
but they seemed in panic.
[distressed chatter]
-[clattering] -[shouting]
Then finally, the waiters told us to reach the pool deck.
Everybody was scrambling
because everyone was panicking.
[commotion]
Exit the other side, please. Exit the other side.
[people shouting]
[Stefania] There was a lot of broken dishes and glasses on the floor,
and we were dressed up for the dinner,
so we wore high heels.
But finally, we reached the pool deck,
and I remember, I looked out the windows.
I saw Giglio Island.
[man, in Italian] Look, there's the coast. There's no problem.
Look, Alice, look at the land. We have arrived!
[Stefania] We could see the lights.
We could see the… you know, the port.
So I say, "Oh. Oh, okay, we are just… next to the land,
so it's okay. It's gonna be fine."
Many people relaxed,
and that's where the problem is.
We lowered our defenses.
[alarm ringing]
[low rumbling]
[metallic clanging]
There were three chefs. They were stuck in the elevator.
They were shouting and knocking the elevator door.
[banging]
Four people went there.
And we forced the door to open, and we took them out.
[chilling string music playing]
[Rose] At the back of Deck 5, the ship was listing more and more.
[chatter]
I remember thinking to myself, "I can't stay here."
"I need to get off the ship."
[distant banging]
And as I'm walking along the corridor, I see my superior.
She sees me, and she says, "Where are you going?"
And I say, "I'm going to my muster station."
She said, "No, you're not."
"You're gonna go back into the lounge, and you're going to entertain passengers."
And I couldn't believe what I was hearing,
and I said, "I quit."
I went straight to my muster station.
I didn't wait for any code, any signal,
any mayday, nothing.
[scraping]
I'm on Deck 4. I'm at the front of the ship.
We, the crew,
we're in a completely segregated, different area.
[distant banging]
My superior officer was supposed to come,
but when he arrived,
it was like seeing a ghost.
He was completely white. Completely white.
There was nothing behind his eyes. I felt like I was seeing a zombie.
He had his… his engineer suit on,
which is kind of like a onesie or a Babygro.
It's like an all-in-one, and it was completely drenched in water.
And when he came, he wasn't able to communicate.
It was at that point that I was like, "Okay, we've got no leadership."
"It's falling to me."
[low creaking]
[tense music playing]
[Manrico, in Italian] I am on the bridge, and I say to the officers,
"Look, the ship is already tilting 20 degrees."
So a light should've gone off in their head, since it is their job,
and they should know that the more the ship tilts,
the more stability is lost.
[Patricia, in English] The level of the water
was now getting closer and closer
to where we were at.
What seemed to be so far from the lifeboats
is now creeping closer and closer to where we were,
and I was kinda getting more panicked and scared,
and I started to film everything that I could.
-[beep] -[distressed chatter]
[Patricia] People having to grab the side
in order to stay from sliding to the side of the boat.
No one's telling us what to do,
and then Nicholas said…
"This boat's going down. We need to get off."
[Patricia] Wait, wait. Her husband, her husband.
[Nicholas] So we opened up the lifeboat, and when we got in there,
we started looking at, like, you know, the pulley system
and then also the motors.
[Patricia] I'm getting pushed!
-[commotion] -[Patricia] I'm…
We actually now start to see what looks like a chef,
and he's got a life vest on.
[Patricia] He comes and tells us,
"You are not supposed to touch all of this."
He closes the gate.
[shouting]
-[man] Hey, hey, hey, one by one. -[Nicholas] What do you wanna say?
I'm getting a bit louder. "This doesn't make sense."
"We need to get off this boat."
[Patricia] And we're kinda starting to freak out.
[in Italian] It was very evident
that it wasn't only a blackout,
that the passengers stopped believing this
and started calling the police.
[ringing tone]
[alarm ringing]
[in English]
[in Italian] They were saying there had been a blackout,
but they weren't telling them the reality of the situation.
The captain probably wanted to exonerate himself
from what was happening.
Which is very wrong, in my opinion.
[clattering]
[Manoj, in English] Some chef comes up and says,
"You know what? Something big has happened,
and Deck C is leaking."
When he said Deck C is leaking, I forgot everything.
I run to the downstairs,
because whenever I get paid,
I used to keep my money under the bed.
I was in a lot of debt.
I had put my family in trouble.
I was keep thinking every day I will get enough money to pay all my debt.
[wistful piano music playing]
All my hard work, everything that I save,
under my bed.
So I have to get my money,
which I have in my cabin in Deck B.
I see chief security guard standing there,
and he was stopping me, saying,
"You're not… you're not allowed to go in Deck B."
He said, "No one is allowed in this area."
I said, "But I have very important things to take."
He said, "Nothing important than your life."
He was right.
I have to get to my lifeboat.
[alarm ringing]
[tense orchestral music building]
[alarm ringing]
[Manrico, in Italian] On the bridge, there is a lot of chaos.
The other officers are speechless. They don't know what to do.
And at this point, they hit the general emergency button,
and the blasts are triggered.
[high-pitched blasts repeating]
[Stefania, in English] Suddenly, we heard the first siren blast.
At that moment, everybody went quiet.
[high-pitched blast]
[Meghan] We heard one horn and then a second horn.
And about this time, I think,
"No shit," you know? That this is what we've been waiting on all night.
[shouting in Italian]
This was probably one of the ugliest points of the evening
because it was just hundreds of people fighting to push through each other
and push over each other to get to these life rafts.
[man] Hey, hey!
I was being shoved around by people my father's age.
[shouting]
[man] Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.
Please remain calm and go to your muster station on Deck 4
[Manrico, in Italian] Military mentality prevails on the ship.
Hierarchy is important. Each person has a role.
Why did it take them 45 minutes to call a general emergency?
I think the captain wanted to see how the situation evolved.
In my opinion, it should have been sounded no later than five minutes after impact.
I went down to Deck 4
to try to save as many people as possible
and lead the rescue operations.
-[clattering] -[distressed chatter]
[Stefania, in English] The ship was tilted,
and my mother began to struggle with her heels.
She held my hand really tight
and said, "Don't let me go."
[somber music playing]
[long high-pitched blast]
[distressed chatter]
At this moment,
we, without saying a word,
looked at each other and knew what we had to do.
[determined music playing]
[Nicholas] One by one, one by one.
[Patricia] Get the kids, go, go. You, you, you, you.
[Nicholas] And we start getting people into the lifeboat.
You never know what kind of person you are,
like, flight or fight.
You never know if you're gonna be that person
that's just gonna stand there still
or go into action.
-[man speaking Italian] -[Patricia] You go, you go.
-[shouting] -[banging]
[in Italian]
[man] Bring the children here.
Bring the children here.
[in English] The lifeboats can only hold 150 people,
so you have to make sure there's only 150 people.
[man, in Italian] Stop. We're going to capsize.
We're going to capsize. Stop!
[panicked shouting]
Stop!
[distressed chatter]
[man] No, no, no!
[in English] We've got quite a few people on the boat,
close to the 150-people maximum.
People are offering money to get on a boat. It was very sad.
One of 'em was, like, a little bit more elderly,
and I was just like, "Oh man."
-[woman 1] What is your name? -Nicholas Taliaferro.
-[woman 1] From where? Nicholas? -[Nicholas] San Diego, California.
[woman 2] It's very helpful.
[Patricia] I was sitting waiting in the lifeboat.
There's a point that people wanted to say their names on the camera.
[woman 1] We're Steve and Kathy, from Port Huron, Michigan.
[woman 2] We're Marie and Melissa.
-[woman 3] We're gonna stay together. -[woman 2] Yes, we're gonna stay together.
[Patricia] It's so eerie
because they thought they were gonna die.
[expectant music playing]
[John] We were on the high side of the ship.
There's just dozens and dozens of people
piling into what essentially is, like, a metal canister.
Then we eventually had our turn to get into the lifeboat.
"Let's get this life raft actually down into the water."
Everybody, once they were on, was just dying to hear that order.
[man] Think we might be ready to go.
[Stefania] I looked at the people in the lifeboats,
and they were scared.
They were waiting for the signal of abandon ship.
[somber string music playing]
[man, in Italian] Yes, but why are they not sending the lifeboats down?
[Manrico] We were expecting this signal, to abandon ship.
But it was slow to arrive, and it was not clear why.
[in English] And I noticed everybody was wearing a life jacket,
but we didn't find one.
And I remember Luisa looked at my mother,
and she said, "I can't swim."
She was pretty scared.
My mother said, "I need to go to the cabin."
"I need to get Luisa's life jacket,
and also I will change my shoes because I can't walk anymore."
And I say, "No!"
"This is the worst idea ever."
"There's no way I'm going back to our cabin."
"It's two deck below."
And she said, "We are going."
"If you don't want to come with us,
you can just wait here with Andrea."
[music intensifies]
[alarm ringing]
[man 1, in Italian] Are the lifeboats ready?
[man 2] Yes, they're coming down. I see them. I see them.
[music becomes hopeful]
[cheering and applause]
[Stefania, in English] As soon as I entered the lifeboat,
I called my mother,
and I said, "Where are you?"
She told me she was about to get onto a lifeboat too.
[man, in Italian] We are going down. We are going down.
Just because we were on the lifeboat didn't make us feel any better.
[man, in Italian] Hands in, hands in.
[Patricia, in English] When it went to slowly go down to the waterline,
we started holding hands and say "Our Father."
And we said it repeatedly and repeatedly and over and over and over again.
"We are gonna do this together."
We could see what would've been our room,
which was above where the lifeboats were,
was… was right at water level at this point.
[man 1] Oh, look at that list. Holy shit!
[woman] Oh my God, the boat is sinking.
[man 2] Sh! We don't wanna be yelling it out loud, guys.
That would scare the shit outta me if I was up there.
[man 3] Glad to be outta there.
[Meghan] I saw the crew member getting the go-ahead to deploy the lifeboat,
and I remember thinking, "Thank God."
We finally had gotten this close to getting off the boat.
We were on a high side at this point.
I was holding Lila,
and then, within seconds,
I had the feeling of, like, a rollercoaster ride
where your stomach drops.
-[crashing] -[screaming]
[screaming]
It was a big drop, a big bang, and then a tumble.
[man, in Italian] God, now I am scared!
[shouting]
[in English] The lifeboat tipped, and it basically flung 80 people in that boat.
-[crashing] -[shouting]
Piles of people just slamming against one another.
You're just a mangling of bodies and people screaming and crying.
[shouting, screaming]
With the ship at an angle,
they basically deployed the lifeboat right into the side of the cruise ship.
[haunting music playing]
[distant shouting]
[John] We were on what was now the high side of the lifeboat
and basically holding ourselves up with our feet.
I was bleeding. You know, our feet were bleeding.
[baby wailing]
Lila's crying is just shattering Meghan.
I remember crying out to John,
you know, "John, I'm not gonna be able to hold Lila."
And I handed Lila to you.
It was an extremely precarious situation.
I don't know whether the thing was gonna drop
because we were high off of the waterline.
Below us on the lifeboat, there were clearly people that needed help,
but I…
My entire focus was on saving my family.
We really didn't know how we could get outta this thing.
[distant shouting]
[Meghan] At that point, I heard myself say,
"Are we gonna die?"
[alarm ringing]
[Manrico, in Italian] I never heard "abandon ship."
The captain found it difficult to give this order
because when the captain says abandon ship, the ship is lost.
[Manoj, in English] People are leaving the ship, but for me,
it was real bad situation. I was still in the ship.
I was really scared because I don't know swimming.
In order to join in the cruise line,
you have to be trained by swimming.
But my institute, they put me in a life jacket,
and they just pushed me in the swimming pool.
And I was floating, and the next minute, they took me out from the pool,
and they said, "Yeah, your training is done."
So I don't know what to do.
The ship was falling, like, really fast.
"I'm… I'm going to die."
And then one of my colleagues saw me
with my wet eyes, and he said, "Come with me."
The water had reached Deck 3,
and he guided me to Deck 4 on the other side.
I reach other side, and I get in the boat.
[people shouting]
When I left, I can see a lot of people still inside.
They were struggling to… to be rescued.
I didn't believe it's happening.
I was still thinking it must be a dream.
And one of my friends was working with me,
and he just told me and said, "Hey, you see?"
"Captain is sitting in the lifeboat."
And that was surprising me.
Why captain need to get out before me?
[man 1, in Spanish] It's tilting.
[man 2, in Italian] Look, the tilt is increasing!
-[man 3 speaking Italian] -[man 4] Look at that!
[Rose, in English] As the ship was sinking,
we kept tilting and tilting and tilting. We couldn't stand up,
so we rearranged ourselves onto the side of the ship.
What we were also seeing on this high part of the ship,
there was a lifeboat that was trying to deploy and go down,
and, because of the angle of the ship,
the lifeboat was rolling,
and we saw people being tipped out into the water.
-[creaking] -[commotion]
[screaming]
[shouting in Italian]
[man] Help me!
On the open area that we're in,
there's a set of double doors,
and behind that is a horizontal corridor,
and it's very wide.
And the other side of it is a… a railing,
but because we were tipping so much, it was becoming impassable.
We have to get across this chasm, and we need to get to a lifeboat,
or we at least need to jump in the water.
I yelled out to all the crew members,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna throw people across the way
so that they can catch on to the banister
and then climb down to the side of the ship
that was closer to the water.
I'm standing on one side, I've got a man standing on the other side,
and we're taking people under the arms, and we're just throwing them.
After we managed to get everyone across,
there were five of us that, um, at that point, got stranded.
We had tilted so high that now this was truly an elevator shaft.
There's no way we could've made it across.
At this point, everything went eerily peaceful,
and it felt like being marooned on a desert island.
[mournful cello music playing]
[John] We've gotta get out of the lifeboat.
There was a hatch that wasn't too far from us that was open
where that was the clear escape point.
The few of us who were not in the pile at the bottom of it
basically began to try to climb out through that hatch.
One by one, we climbed our way out.
Then once on the top of the lifeboat, you then had to get onto the cruise ship,
which was now above us, and we…
There was a gap that we had to clear.
[John] We had to make a human chain,
but there was no way I could actually climb out
while carrying Lila.
I had to hand Lila to a stranger.
Dangling over the Mediterranean in the dark.
[tense string music playing]
You know, one slip and you're down in the water,
which was, you know, who knows how far below us at that point.
I've always had a fear of heights,
so the notion that I would be climbing up the side of a ship,
like, by my fingertips, probably six stories up,
in the dark over the Med is, like, crazy to me.
But it was the only way Lila or I or Meghan were getting off.
Then we eventually had to get back on the ship,
which was a real dark spot in the night for us.
Our first thought was, "Is there another lifeboat?"
But it was very quickly evident that there were no lifeboats left.
I was saying to John, "Let's swim. We can survive this."
We started talking really seriously about what it would actually involve.
The height of the jump.
Could Lila survive that jump?
Can we swim with Lila in the temperature of the water?
So we were weighing the likelihood of surviving it
against staying on the ship.
That was the time where a different level of realization began to sink in
that we may not be getting off this boat.
[baby crying]
As a Christian, we're told to not bargain with God.
-[mournful orchestral music playing] -But that's where your head goes.
And I said, "God, you just get me off this ship,
I will… show Lila who Jesus is. I will raise this kid right,
but you've got to get us off this ship."
With the ship being so far tilted over, we were at the high side.
[Meghan] Then I see what looked like a crew member.
He was dressed in white.
He looked official in some sort of a uniform, and…
He looked at Lila. He looked at us.
He said, "Get down to this level on the other side of the ship."
"You all probably are gonna need to swim."
"That's where you're gonna have the best chance to survive."
[music fades out]
[Manrico, in Italian] I look towards the front of the ship
and see a small group of passengers standing still.
And I thought, "Are they in trouble?"
"Why haven't they joined all of us?"
Walking towards this small group,
it was very difficult to tell the wall from the floor,
so I was forced to walk on the walls at this point.
At first, I checked if the doors could hold my weight, using my foot.
But then, unfortunately, one of the doors opened like a hatch.
I fell into the empty darkness
and passed out.
[people shouting]
[Patricia, in English] When we got to the island,
what are we supposed to do now?
Where do we go?
There was nobody giving direction to anyone.
At one point, I screamed,
"Is there anybody that can help us?"
[siren wailing]
[chatter]
And faintly, I heard someone say, "Go to the church!"
[solemn music playing]
The first thing I did was to call my mother,
but the phone didn't ring anymore.
But she said she was on a lifeboat, so she have to be here somewhere.
[baby crying]
We began to search for her and Luisa.
The island was very crowded,
and it seemed impossible to find someone.
We entered every shop.
We entered the church.
[woman] The crew still does not know anything, and the ship is still sinking.
They don't know if anyone's still on it.
We found a little nook in the church.
[Nicholas] Everyone's been really anxious and very scared and cold.
I went and found those foil blankets.
I was able to bring 'em back to the church.
I can still remember people calling out their family's name and no reply.
[man] Judy!
[woman] Steve! Steve!
Kathy!
We looked everywhere for my mother,
and finally, I just stand near some people
who were watching the ship
because I thought maybe her lifeboat isn't arrived yet.
As the time passes,
we noticed that the ship was tilting even more.
[woman] This is straight out of a scene of Titanic. Completely.
[Patricia] To see it from that viewpoint was so scary.
Yeah, you could see people on the boat waving their hands,
ask… like… You could see 'em begging for help.
-[indistinct talking over radio] -[helicopter blades whirring]
It was horrible to see it.
Even though you knew you were safe,
you knew that there was still people trapped on the ship.
[somber music droning]
We could see there was an open hallway
that went all the way through the ship to the opposite railing,
and that was going to be the obvious way for us to get to the other side.
[John] So that cross hallway was effectively, you know, a 200-foot slide.
So we knew that once we were on our bottoms,
we could not get back onto our feet.
[baby crying]
The boat was still moving so much that every, you know, half a degree it moved,
a new piece of furniture would just go barreling down the hallway.
[clattering]
I had Lila still strapped to me, and I sort of held her on my chest…
[baby wailing]
…and just slid down that whole thing.
[distorted crashing]
You're tumbling very awkwardly,
barreling down this cross section on our backs.
[distorted whooshing]
Furniture and just stuff all around us.
I mean, we had to be going 20 miles an hour.
[rumbling]
I remember feeling a jolt. Lila's just slammed her head.
-[distorted rumbling, buzzing] -[thud]
[music fades]
[John] Oh my goodness, she just hit her head so hard.
"Is she okay?"
I mean, I thought for sure she wouldn't be able to survive that.
I remember him telling me when we got to the bottom of the slide,
in a… almost like a confession,
"Lila hit her head very hard."
And I could remember the pain in his face.
I think that my reaction was just to check on her
and that she was crying,
and it was just more of like a, "She's okay. Let's keep moving."
-[tense music playing] -[helicopter blades whirring]
[echoing bang]
[in Italian] Once I woke up, I quickly checked myself,
and I realized that I had a broken leg.
Looking around, I understood that I was in the restaurant.
I started to shout, "Help, help, help!"
But obviously nobody could hear me.
Next to me, there was a frying pan.
I grabbed this pan and tried to bang it on the ground.
[metallic banging]
[Rose, in English] Whilst we're marooned on this doorway,
Deck 5, I could hear knocking.
[repeated metallic banging]
And it wasn't like, um… a mechanical kind of knocking.
It was almost like, you know,
like people were trying to let us know where they were.
But there's no way, like… We couldn't get to them.
[expectant piano music playing]
Once we got to the low side, we could see the water.
Finally, we are this close.
[people shouting]
We were trying to get the attention of whatever lifeboats could maybe hear us.
[man] Hey!
[Meghan] I could see a lifeboat with people's faces.
I made eye contact with a woman,
and we just sort of locked eyes for probably just a moment.
I held up Lila and said, "Bambino," you know, "Take my baby."
[music becomes hopeful]
And she just… shook her head.
I think she wishes she could help but couldn't.
At this point, I was completely broken psychologically.
In my head, I prayed a lot.
[Meghan] But all of a sudden, we noticed that there was a couple of lifeboats empty
and kind of lingering around the boat.
[John] We saw signs of life.
We both jumped into action, thinking, "Oh my gosh, are the…
are the lifeboats coming back for more people?"
And when we did get the attention of the captain of the lifeboat,
he was trying to get to the opening where we were standing.
It felt like we were on that deck waiting what seemed like forever.
During this whole time, the ship continued to slowly tip further and further.
We just felt like every minute could be our last.
The lifeboats themselves are probably ten or 15 feet below us.
The ocean was very rough,
so the boat's sort of banging against the cruise ship.
And so even the process of being able to get onto the lifeboat was a risk.
But somehow, we climbed our way onto the boat.
We're so relieved.
We drove right out from under it.
I mean, and you look up out the opening of the lifeboat,
and we literally couldn't see sky.
The entire sky is the side of the cruise ship.
[Meghan] Lila had quieted.
I remember holding her in my arms, and I was hoping that she's okay,
that nothing was wrong.
[animated chatter]
I definitely felt like I'm all alone. Nobody's coming to rescue us.
Then we started hearing helicopters going overhead.
But the ship was covering us like an umbrella.
They can't see us.
I couldn't get down to the water level. I couldn't get back inside the ship.
At this point, we were sinking.
And that was the moment
when this little reel of my life started playing in front of my eyes.
[wistful piano music playing]
I remember my dad saying that
it shouldn't be that children die before parents.
So it was at that mo… moment that that fight kicked in.
I have to figure out how to survive.
[music becomes determined]
[helicopter blades whirring]
At that point, I think, "How can they see us?"
And then I realized I have this flashlight in my pocket.
I don't know Morse code,
but I started flashing the light to the boat in front of us.
[man 1] Rescue India Mike Alpha. Rescue India Mike Alpha.
[man 2, in Italian] Go ahead, go ahead.
[man 1] We have a signal from someone. We're going to assist them.
[man 2] Okay, perfect.
[Rose, in English] And then, all of a sudden, this man floats down
like James Bond.
[hopeful orchestral music playing]
We're pulled up into the helicopter,
and one at a time,
they went back down and got the other four.
[man 1, in Italian] All right, well done. Received three people in good condition
who will be taken to Grosseto Airport,
where people are waiting for first aid.
[music becomes triumphant]
[Rose, in English] When I flew away, I could see everything that I loved
and everything that was my reality was gone.
But I was alive.
[music fades out]
[distant sirens wailing]
[suspenseful music playing]
-[woman] It was late on a Friday night. -[phone pinging]
My feed was lit up from passengers who were on some cruise ship
off the coast of Tuscany on Giglio Island.
I knew the only way to find out what was really going on
was to go there.
[reporter 1] It's a crowded cruise ship that ran aground and is tipped over.
[reporter 2] …passengers described as scenes from the movie Titanic.
[reporter 3] As many as 70 people may be missing.
[woman] I arrived in Giglio the following day,
about, I wanna say, 6:30 a.m.
I will never forget seeing the Costa Concordia.
It was difficult not to just stare at this gigantic boulder
protruding out of the bottom of it.
My job is to try to explain how on earth this happened.
An Italian cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany last night.
[anchor] Let's be honest, you have thought about it
every time you get on a plane or a cruise ship.
What happens if something goes wrong?
Well, it happened.
[Barbie] The ship is now in very shallow water,
but it is because of the size of the ship
and the placement of it in this very rocky area
that they have several dozen Italian coast-guard divers
who are checking out the perimeter and inside the ship right now
to see if they can find anyone there.
[in Italian] I am a fire department diver
who specializes in cave diving.
Two single dives, 40 minutes each.
Total duration for the operation, two hours.
[Stefania, in English] It was my mother's birthday,
and I thought that I should be at the restaurant,
singing her "Happy Birthday,"
but now I am on Giglio Island,
sitting on the ground,
just wondering, "Where is she?"
And I asked myself, "Will I ever see her again?"
[Barbie] As the time ticked on and the water was cold,
you know, this is January, the chance of survival
for anyone after the first 24 hours
ob… obviously diminishes.
[man, in Italian] Okay.
Detach.
All right!
[diver breathing through apparatus]
[Francesco] The fear is huge
because there really was a risk of ending up at the bottom of the sea
inside this gigantic ship and becoming victims instead of rescuers.
[in English] Everything that wasn't attached became an obstacle.
There were wires.
There were sharp edges.
All of these things, obviously, for a diver, puts them at risk.
[creaking]
[Manrico, in Italian] Dawn finally came, and with it, light.
I was still in this restaurant.
Hours go by, and hypothermia comes.
Having to spend another night in those conditions, honestly,
I couldn't be sure I would survive until the next morning.
I started to think that, uh…
if I could… if I could get out of this situation…
I could start thinking about having a family.
Um… that was perhaps what was missing in my life.
[doleful music droning]
[Francesco] We hadn't slept for 48 hours.
The van door opens,
and my boss says, "There's one more to save. We have to go."
[Barbie, in English] The hotel manager, Manrico Giampedroni,
who was last seen by several of the witnesses
trying to save people in the hospitality area of the ship.
[Francesco, in Italian] My colleagues went through the ship…
calling out for any survivors.
"We are the fire department! We are the fire department!"
"Is anyone there?"
"Is there someone there? Can anyone hear me?"
And, at a certain point,
there was a response.
[diver inhales through apparatus]
[man] All right, calm down. Take it easy.
[Francesco] We had squeezed into the bowels of the tunnel,
so we didn't have natural lighting.
The light could not reach there.
We were, like, inside a cave.
[man] Okay, that's fine. Slowly.
[hopeful string music playing]
Slowly. That's fine.
Slowly.
That's right!
[breathing through apparatus]
[Francesco] And then I see the person we're looking for.
"Hi, what's your name? What's your name?" I ask.
And he answers me, "Manrico."
"Manrico Giampedroni."
He tells me, "Hi, I'm Francesco…
one of your rescuers."
He tells me, "Don't worry now."
"We'll get you out."
[serene music playing]
After 13 years, I still cry.
It's unbelievable.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[reporter 1, in English] Always something akin to a miracle in disasters.
This time, it was a crewman trapped inside,
found by rescuers going cabin to cabin and tapping on the hull.
[reporter 2] Two days trapped with a broken leg.
[man, in Italian] Did you think you might not make it?
Yes, when I was alone in the restaurant, yes.
[reporter 1, in English] After the shock, the panic, the chaos,
tears of relief.
Dancer Rose Metcalf was one of the last to be rescued from the sinking ship.
[reporter 2] Others, including Nick Tally and his friends, are also safe.
[Nicholas] There was families trembling, handing me their children,
telling me, you know, "Take my child. Put him on the boat."
And we had to wait over an hour and a half before we could get onto that boat.
[Stefania] I had to wait two years.
My mother's body was one of the last ones to be found.
Finding her body
wasn't comforting for me at all.
It's like Costa Concordia interrupted my life.
She was my entire world,
and I was hers.
[babbles]
[in Italian] What's the name of this beautiful child?
This girl is called Stefania.
Whose is this child?
[somber music playing]
[laughs]
[in English] The captain of the cruise ship that ran aground here
on the coast of Tuscany
has been stopped by the Italian authorities.
He's being investigated for manslaughter and for abandoning ship.
These are two very serious offenses in maritime law.
Thirty-two people died that night, including a 5-year-old child.
In the days after the accident,
the Costa PR team was really the only conduit for the information,
and it was very clear they had already decided whose fault it was.
And tonight, the blame game has stepped up a gear
with the ship's owners saying that their captain was at fault.
We believe it has been a… a human error here.
The captain did not follow the authorized route.
[reporter, in Italian] Captain, Captain!
[Barbie, in English] One of the most dramatic aspects of the story
happened on 17th January.
A local journalist found a USB key in his unlocked vehicle.
This USB contained an intercept of a conversation
between the coast guard in Livorno and Captain Schettino
in the period of time after Schettino said he had left the ship.
[coast guard, in Italian] What are you doing, Captain?
[Schettino] I am here to coordinate the rescue.
[coast guard] Coordinate the rescue from on board. Are you refusing?
[Schettino] No, no, I'm not refusing.
[coast guard] Are you refusing to go on board, Captain?
Tell me, why are you not going on board?
[in English] Once you heard this commander saying
to Captain Schettino, "Get back on the… on the ship,"
you couldn't unhear it.
[coast guard, in Italian] Get back on board. That's an order!
You must not make any other assessment. You have declared abandon ship.
Now I am in charge!
Go back on board!
Is that clear? Can you not hear me?
-[Schettino] I am going back on board. -[coast guard] Go!
[Barbie, in English] The inarguable result of that was that anyone,
anywhere in the world, knew Captain Schettino as Captain Coward.
[in Italian] Can you let me through?
[reporter, in English] The Italian captain, Francesco Schettino,
striding into court this morning
with that same confident swagger he displayed aboard his ship.
Captain Francesco Schettino was in court today
to face charges of multiple manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster,
and causing personal injury to 150 people.
The trial lasted for several years,
and it was held inside of a theater in the city of Grosseto.
And I went to every single hearing.
The prosecution has laid the blame for the disaster
very firmly on Captain Schettino.
It says that in his command of his ship, he was grossly negligent,
but the captain denies all the charges against him,
and he insists that others must share responsibility for what happened.
[Barbie] The entire focus was on Captain Schettino,
but one of the primary questions that a lot of us had
was whether or not this was some sort of a mechanical failure.
Shortly after the accident, the black box was recovered,
but it was faulty,
and so it seemed for a period of time
that there would be absolutely no way to find out
what was really going on on the bridge the night of the accident.
[mysterious music playing]
2012, I was a young computer science researcher.
I was given a bunch of discs
from the Costa Concordia.
Two experts already tried to take the data out,
and they both failed.
So I was obsessed.
I created a software which describes everything that happened that night.
[alarm ringing]
The emergency generator of the Costa Concordia
had a problem that night.
In particular, it powered on and off several time
and almost never was able to connect to the emergency power lines
and power the emergency devices.
It's impossible to know with certainty exactly how people died on the ship,
but we do know that at least two of the lifeboats
on the upper side of the ship failed
because of the emergency generator's failure,
and we know that those people had to disembark
and had to try to find their way to other lifeboats on the same deck, four.
We also know that… that,
because of the failure of the emergency generator,
the elevators weren't working.
[Alessandro] When running the software I wrote to put all this data in sync,
there was one big surprise.
Immediately before the accident,
we found out that there was a mismatch between the order given to the helmsman
and what he was doing.
[alarm ringing]
[Alessandro] We hear Schettino giving some instructions,
and the helmsman, for 13 seconds, does the exact opposite.
Later, an independent study
by Professor Bruno Neri and Paolo Neri of the University of Pisa
demonstrated that if Schettino's orders would have been executed correctly,
the impact would have been partial or nonexistent.
[solemn music playing]
In the early 2000s, the cruise industry was exploding,
and the Italian-run Costa cruise-line company was in trouble.
They couldn't compete.
The only way that they could survive in that market
was to be acquired by an American corporation.
With Costa's expansion, they had to find staff
and to try to train them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
It's important to note that Captain Schettino himself
had written to Costa and said that he was concerned
that people were being promoted too quickly,
that they weren't being trained adequately,
and they just didn't fit in line with the type of ship he wanted to run.
What we know about the helmsman is that he had been promoted quickly to the job,
and it seems very clear that at the moment of crisis
when he was needed very much to understand the orders from Captain Schettino,
there was a language barrier, and it is likely
that he just didn't understand what the captain told him to do.
[music fades out]
[man, in Italian] In the name of the Italian people, the court,
in accordance with articles 533 and 535,
declares Francesco Schettino
guilty of the crimes attributed to him
The total sentence of 16 years of imprisonment and one month of arrest.
[in English] Today, the captain of the Costa Concordia
was convicted of manslaughter and abandoning ship
and sentenced to 16 years.
[contemplative string music playing]
[Manoj] I will never work for the cruise industry ever again.
And I pray nobody should face this situation.
All my money,
I lost it.
But I learned that life is more important than money.
And so every morning when I wake up,
the first thing I do,
I say thank you.
I learnt a lot.
Now I can swim.
-[no sound on video] -[sober string music continues]
[Lila laughs]
[Meghan] You wanna sing again? Okay, go ahead.
[Lila babbling] Ma-ma-ma.
Ama-ma-ma-ma!
Two, three…
[John] When we got home, I mean, I was completely broken.
I mean, I was diagnosed with PTSD. I had panic attacks. I had nightmares.
We were worried about Lila
after all that she had gone through both physically and emotionally.
We had to watch her for a couple of weeks just to make sure everything was fine.
Oh, look at that tongue.
What other funny faces can you make?
[John] I saw what it did to me,
but this is a one-year-old that can't communicate,
and so I remember we were talking to psychologists and specialists.
[Meghan] See you later, bye! Have fun!
-Bye-bye. -[Meghan] Bye-bye.
But she turned out to have a perfectly normal childhood.
So we… we talk about it often.
It's like, why did God choose to save us that night?
You know, why are we here?
What is it that we should be doing with the time he's given us?
Lila has her life, the beautiful life she's lived.
And, by God's grace, uh… we survived.
[producer] John, she survived because of you.
[exhales sharply]
[gentle orchestral music playing]
[John sobs]
[John] I just fought so hard that night to try to save them.
There were times I didn't think we were gonna get off.
But I'm so glad we did.
I just look back, what the last decade or so has been like,
like the lives we've been able to live, we feel so fortunate for.
Lila is the most well-rounded, grounded, incredible 15-year-old.
And she's the most beautiful ballerina.
She has this God-given passion for dance.
She's just such a beautiful young woman.
The world is her oyster.
She's gonna have some impact on it
as a result of getting off the ship that night.
We learned very shortly after we got back
that Meghan was pregnant.
You know, she was pregnant that night as we were fighting for our lives.
One of the greatest gifts I could've been given was that pregnancy.
What's funny is my ultrasounds show, when they timed the baby,
the… the conception date was the night of the cruise disaster,
and we were like, "I can assure you that's not when he was conceived," but, um…
[both chuckling]
Now you know why I didn't have time to put my shirt on!
[both laughing]
[soaring orchestral music playing]