On the 10th anniversary of the Concordia Cruise Disaster. Italy remembered the 32 dead with a ceremony that recounted the moment the cruise ship struck a shoal and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. Some of the 4,200 survivors attended the anniversary ceremonies. Which began with a noontime Mass and culminated with a candlelit procession to Giglio’s pier at 9:45 p.m. local time. It’s the exact moment the Concordia hit the rocks, severing a 70-meter (230-foot) gash in its hull. Coastguardsmen placed a flower wreath on the dock. The parish priest led the small group in a period of silence punctuated only by fog horns and church bells, commemorating the disaster’s absurdity.
Bells rang earlier at the same Giglio church that welcomed hundreds of people who had abandoned ship and made shore in lifeboats that frigid night. After the uneven liner toppled upon its side, some walked down rope ladders. While others were evacuated from the decks by rescue helicopters.
“I invite you to have the courage to look forward,” Grosseto Bishop Giovanni Roncari addressed survivors. Along with family members of the deceased, and Coast Guard officials who assisted in the rescue. “Hope does not remove tragedy or pain; rather, it teaches us to look beyond the present moment.”
The engine room flooded, and generators failed after the ship hit the reef. Triggering a power outage that sent the ship adrift until it eventually crashed offshore and sank. According to evidence produced at the trial, Schettino understated the gravity of the situation in discussions with the Coast Guard. It delayed an evacuation order and ultimately abandoned the ship before all passengers and crew were off.
The tenth anniversary of the Concordia Cruise Disaster also commemorates how the locals of Giglio welcomed the 4,200 surviving passengers and crew. Providing food, blankets, and a place to rest until daybreak, when they were transferred to the mainland. Giglio’s people then spent another two years living with the Concordia’s 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) corpse until it was righted and carried away for scrap. Residents of Giglio, for their part, welcomed Kevin Rebello, whose brother is Russell, a Concordia waiter. He was the last person missing until sailors discovered his remains while dismantling the ship in a Genoa port in 2014.