Toll from cruise tragedy falls

Although the number of confirmed fatalities from the Costa Concordia cruiseship capsize has risen to five the number of missing is now down to 15.

There are reports that at least some of the missing may be trapped in air pockets below the waterline so the final death toll looks likely to be well below the more than 70 originally feared.

Despite reports of panic during the evacuation from the listing ship it seems almost a miracle that only half a percent of passengers and crew appear to have been lost despite the casualty being at night and after a power failure on the vessel.

The torn hull of the Costa Concordia

Maybe 50 or 100 of the survivors are reported to have injuries of varying severity.

Passengers have complained about lack of preparedness and organisation in the evacuation so it appears that luck and good fortune may have played a major role in averting a Titanic scale disaster.

But many questions remain to be answered including the key issue of how the 114,000-gt Costa Concordia (built 2006), a large modern well equipped vessel owned by the biggest of the cruise shipping groups could end up lying on its side with a 40 metre gash in the hull.

The voyage data recorder has been recovered from the Costa Concordia and once this is analysed should provide much needed information about what happened before the vessel grounded and capsized.

The master of the Costa Concordia Francesco Schettino (52) who is detained and potentially facing charges of manslaughter has claimed that the rocks that tore the hull were unmarked on nautical charts.

But photographs of the wreck show the vessel perilously close to the jagged shoreline of the island of Giglio.

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