PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy — The first course had just been served in the Costa Concordia’s dining room when the wine glasses, forks and plates of cuttlefish and mushrooms smashed to the ground. At the magic show in the theater, the trash cans tipped over and the theater curtains turned on their side.
Then the hallways turned upside down, and passengers crawled on bruised knees through the dark. Others jumped alone into the cold Mediterranean Sea.
The chaotic escape from the luxury liner was straight out of a scene from “Titanic” for many of the 4,000-plus passengers and crew on the cruise ship, which ran aground off the Italian coast late Friday and flipped on its side with a 160-foot gash in its hull.
At least three bodies had been recovered. Rescuers searching for the missing heard the shouts of a man and a woman coming late Saturday from the wrecked cruise ship. The coast guard was bringing in a specialized search team to find them, while close to 40 others remained unaccounted for.
The Friday the 13th grounding of the Concordia was one of the most dramatic cruise- ship accidents in recent memory. It immediately raised a host of questions:
Why did it hit a reef so close to the Tuscan island of Giglio? Did a power failure cause the crew to lose control? Did the captain — under investigation on manslaughter allegations — steer it in the wrong direction on purpose? And why did crew members tell passengers they weren’t in danger until the boat was listing perilously to the side?
The delay made lifeboat rescue eventually impossible for some of the passengers, some of whom jumped into the sea while others waited to be plucked to safety by helicopters.
“We had to scream at the controllers to release the boats from the side,” said Mike van Dijk, from Pretoria, South Africa. “It was a scramble, an absolute scramble.”
Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the U.S.-based cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and said it was cooperating with the investigation.
Carnival Corp. issued a statement expressing sympathy that didn’t address the allegations of delayed evacuation.
The captain, Francesco Schettino, was detained for questioning by prosecutors. He faces charges of suspected manslaughter, abandoning ship before all others, and causing a shipwreck, state TV and Sky TV said. Prosecutor Francesco Verusio was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying Schettino deliberately chose a sea route that was too close to shore.
Schettino’s lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, told the agency: “I’d like to say that several hundred people owed their life to the expertise that the commander of the Costa Concordia showed during the emergency.”
France said two of the victims were Frenchmen. A Peruvian diplomat identified the third victim as Tomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza, 49, a crewman from Peru. About 30 people were injured, at least two seriously.
Late Saturday, firefighters who had been searching the Costa Concordia for dozens who remained missing heard distinct shouts, “one in a male voice, the other in a female voice” coming from the cruise ship, said coast guard officer Marcello Fertitta.
The Italian news agency ANSA said earlier that rescuers had found two survivors in a cabin and that they were in good condition. A risky search by divers of the sunken, water-filled half of the ship for the missing was suspended at nightfall Saturday.
The trapped survivors were found more than 24 hours after the ship ran aground and lurched violently.
Passengers described a scene of frantic confusion. Silverware, plates and glasses crashed down from the dining room’s upper-floor balcony, children wailed and darkened hallways upended themselves. Panicked passengers slipped on broken glass as the lights went out, while crew members insisted nothing serious was wrong.
“Have you seen ‘Titanic’? That’s exactly what it was,” said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents.
They all bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along nearly vertical hallways and stairwells, trying to reach rescue boats.
“We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,” said her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61. “We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls.”
She choked up as she remembered the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship listed to the side.
“He said, ‘Take my baby,’ ” Georgia Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand. “I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn’t want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn’t hold her.”
Whispered her daughter Valerie: “I wonder where they are.”
