Three found alive in Italy ship disaster

15 Jan 2012, 9:35 pm   -   Source: AAP
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A picture taken by a passenger aboard the 'Costa Concordia' before being evacuated. (AAP)

A picture taken by a passenger aboard the 'Costa Concordia' before being evacuated. (AAP)

Two South Korean honeymooners have been rescued from a cruise ship wreck on an Italian island as emergency crews searching for dozens missing.

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Two South Korean honeymooners were rescued on Sunday from a cruise ship wreck on an Italian island as emergency crews searching for dozens missing said they could hear another voice inside.

Rescuers said the survivor was an Italian man on the third deck and he was being helped to safety inside the half-submerged Costa Concordia luxury liner, which crashed into rocks on Friday with more than 4,200 people on board.

Two French passengers and one Peruvian crew member have been confirmed killed, apparently after jumping into the chilly Mediterranean waters with dozens of others in a chaotic evacuation.

"We heard a voice from the exposed part," Luca Carli told AFP, adding that the rescuers had begun hearing sounds at around 7am local time (1700AEDT).

"We're trying to get there but it's a very, very complicated operation," Carli said, adding that the man was a public security officer.

He said the South Korean honeymooners had been evacuated by helicopter and were in "perfect condition."

"They were in their cabin, we still don't understand why," he added.

Daniele, one of around 20 army divers at the scene, told AFP as he worked on his oxygen tanks in Giglio harbour: "We've just started searching in the submerged part of the ship. It will take a long time."

"This is our job. We're experts in recovering bodies from submarines and shipwrecks. We've been briefed on the layout of the ship and all the cabin doors can be opened with a hydraulic mechanism," he said.

"It's very possible there are air pockets in the submerged part," he added.

Cosimo Nicastro, a spokesman for the coast guard, told reporters on Saturday: "This is a risky operation. The ship is in waters that are 30 metres (100 feet) deep but it could slowly slip into the sea and sink completely."

"We are talking about 50 or 60 people who are still missing" off the island of Giglio in Tuscany, he said. Interviewed by news channel SkyTG24 on Sunday, Nicastro declined to give a figure for those now believed to be missing.

Nicastro said some survivors may not have been counted properly but that others could have been trapped in their cabins or in other areas below deck.

Investigators arrested the ship's captain on Saturday and were to begin analysing the "black box" recovered by rescuers, which logged all of the 291-metre long ship's movements as well as conversations between personnel.

The captain, Francesco Schettino, told Italian news channel TGCOM that the ship hit a rock that was not on the charts and that he had tried to save as many people as possible.

First officer Ciro Ambrosio was also arrested, local prosecutors said.

Italian media said the two face possible charges of multiple homicide and abandoning the ship before all the passengers were rescued.

The captain "approached Giglio Island in a very awkward way, hit a rock that stuck into its left side, making (the boat) list and take on a huge amount of water in the space of two or three minutes," a prosecutor told reporters.

Island residents also said the ship was sailing far too close to Giglio and had hit an underwater rocky reef that was well known to the residents of the picturesque hilly outcrop, which has a population of just 800.

Rescuers said they plucked 100 people from the sea overnight on Friday after some of the lifeboats on board failed to function or could not descend to the water from a ship that was already badly listing.

About 60 people who had not managed to escape in lifeboats were rescued from the vessel itself, including one passenger with a broken leg.

Some crew members familiar with the layout of the ship were helping divers negotiate their way around the Italian-built liner's 1,500 cabins.

Survivors from around the world - many of them with bloodshot eyes and draped in blankets in Giglio harbour - spoke on Saturday of scenes "like the Titanic" on board and said they were not properly informed about the evacuation.

Some of the survivors were in evening wear as they had just been settling down to dinner on board when the accident happened. There were also bar and restaurant staff in crimson blazers and kitchen staff in white smocks.

"We were lucky we were so close to the shore. Thank God. Everyone was very afraid," said Jose Rodriguez, a 43-year-old barman from Honduras, who was standing in line to receive food and clothing from emergency officials.

Officials said all the survivors had been taken off the island on Saturday to nearby Porto Santo Stefano and then on to other parts of Italy or back home.

The people on board included some 60 nationalities and some 52 were children under six. Nearly a third of the passengers were Italian, followed by Germans and French. There were also Australians, Americans, Russians and Japanese and British tourists on board.

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DEFAT) there were 23 Australian passengers.

The Philippines said 300 Filipino crew members had been aboard the vessel.

The British and French ambassadors visited the scene of the accident, along with diplomats from more than a dozen countries.

They privately expressed frustration over a lack of information about their citizens and on the handling of the ship's evacuation.

At least 42 people were injured, including two seriously - a woman with a blow to the head and a man struck in the spine, medical sources said.

Most of those hospitalised had suffered broken limbs or had hypothermia.

The disaster happened just hours after the ship had left the port of Civitavecchia near Rome at the start of a Mediterranean cruise that was meant to take it to Savona in northwest Italy and then on to Marseille and Barcelona.

An executive with the Genoa-based company that owns the cruise ship insisted the vessel had not strayed off course.

"It is not correct to say that the boat was off its route," said Gianni Onorato, managing director of Costa Crociere.

The company is the biggest cruise operator in Europe, with a turnover of 2.9 billion euros ($3.7 billion) in 2010, according to its website.

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