Original subtitles

Inside Costa Concordia Voices Of Disaster

Every holidaymaker captures their memories.

But this time, their images shocked the world.

And all I could see was the boat coming down.

If you've seen Titanic the film,

when they're getting on the lifeboats, that's what it was like,

but it wasn't women and children first.

I was in free fall for four or five meters.

I imagined our death would be mentioned

in a couple of lines in the corner of some newspaper in Korea.

These are Costa Concordia's voices of disaster.

The cruise ship Costa Concordia has been damaged

near the island of Giglio due to a technical problem.

The ship is taking on water.

Five hours earlier,

the Costa Concordia is docked at the port of Civitavecchia.

It was absolutely huge. It was like we were standing on the port

actually looking up at the ship and down either side of it.

It's hard because it's not a building,

so it's different to being on a tenth floor of a building,

but that's how high it was-- ten stories high on a building.

It was enormous and wonderful.

It was all shiny and magnificent.

You wanted for nothing onboard.

The Concordia departs carrying 1,023 crew and 3,208 passengers.

Living what everyone says is the dream lifestyle

of cruising around the world

is doing what everyone always says they want to do.

We took the cruise and the holiday

to get us back together because we actually split up

probably 11 months ago.

We split up for a little while, and sort of things had been tense since,

and I said, "We need a holiday.

We do everything for everyone else, and it's about time we had some us time."

I expected our honeymoon

to be very comfortable from then on.

I was excited as a little girl.

Oh, my God!

Feel the warmth of the sun.

Luigi, come out and see.

To me, it was a dream.

I fell in love with the ship.

Are you taking pictures of everything?

Tomorrow morning, I will get up early while you sleep

and I will go take more photos.

I don't like boats.

She dragged me along to this cruise and said,

"It's in the Mediterranean. There's no storms. It'll just be nice."

This is the story of the Costa Concordia

told by the people who were there.

Thank you for staying

on the Costa Concordia on your holiday at sea.

We are confident that our hospitality

and our friendly and welcoming atmosphere on board

will help transform your stay into an unforgettable experience.

The commander called me to the bridge

and invited me to come and see his salute of Giglio.

It was a wonderful evening.

The sea was calm, and it was an ordinary, normal crossing.

We were a bit too close to the shore.

Costa Concordia enters shallow waters.

I heard a blow.

The ship hit something.

The ship start leaning on the left side,

and it's, like, push us into the chairs,

and, like, second later, all the lights went... poof.

There was this boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

and I looked at Trace, and I just went, "Trace, we've just run aground."

And she looked at me and she said, "No, no, no."

300 meters from shore, the Concordia hits rocks...

ripping a 50-meter scar in her side.

I have been at sea for 37 years,

and not once in my life did I ever imagine that something like that would happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, I speak on behalf of the captain.

Your attention, please.

We have experienced an electrical fault in one of the generators,

but the situation is under control,

and our technicians are able to rectify the situation at this time.

So please remain calm, and we'll keep you informed

as we have more news to inform you. Thank you for your attention.

We went running back to our cabin on the eighth deck.

We were really scared.

We could not find our room-- 3848, 8834.

There was so much agitation, so much confusion.

We have an electrical problem.

The situation is under control... Please keep calm...

Look at our room.

It seems like we just got hit by a hurricane.

My first reaction, of course, was to go down to Bridge Zero

to go to the place where, more or less, the ship had struck

and inspect the damage that had been done.

I ran into the chief engineer and his second who told me that it was serious

and that the water had begun to rise rapidly.

We heard the signal for a leak,

which is two short blasts followed by alternate tones.

Then we went back to our cabins

and waited and stood there

and were talking to people like it was just--

it was gonna be over soon, and they're gonna fix the leak,

and we're gonna be uprighted.

At first, we thought that the water was only in two compartments,

and by law, with two compartments flooded, the ship can continue its navigation

as if nothing happened, but maybe it was not actually like that.

The ship is listing.

It's a bit tilted. Try to walk!

On board, confusion sets in.

Do you speak Spanish?

No, a little.

Why are you wearing a life jacket if everything is okay?

Crew was not panicking at all.

They was just cleaning, and then boom.

You know, it get black again.

It's tilted, right?

Yes, isn't it?

The passengers obviously wanted to know

much more than we actually knew.

In that case, we were really all in the same boat.

We still hadn't heard the abandon ship.

We have an announcement on behalf of our captain.

Please go back to your cabin, or if you wish, stay around the hall.

We have finished repairing the generator problem.

Everyone, please stay calm.

Passengers are not buying it.

What do you know about the Concordia?

Now the lights are back on and the boat is listing to the right.

I don't know anything. No one is telling us anything.

I want to know if you could tell me what's happening.

The Concordia turns towards the island of Giglio.

The tilt was growing and growing,

and we were slowly getting higher and higher,

and you could see on everyone's faces

that they've started to get more and more worried.

The ship hits a shallow reef, sealing her fate.

Inside the ship, there was no footing anymore.

You could sense the ship tilting more and more.

I guess I really knew we were in trouble when the ship starting listing

to the starboard side.

You could actually feel it going and going,

and the angle was getting worse, and I'm thinking,

"Right, yep, unless we get off this soon, we're gonna be swimming."

I told my daughter if the ship really has a problem

and is going to sink and you can't walk,

and I am 72 years old, we don't stand much of a chance.

The Concordia is dangerously unstable.

And then this alarm went off. Pew, pew, pew.

So they start pulling the tarp out of the boat,

and people just, like...

...zooming into the gates.

And that's when the mayhem started.

People were just pushing, shoving.

Men pushing women away-- pregnant women, kids.

I was mortified just to see that happening.

You could just feel your adrenaline.

You know what I mean? Your natural adrenaline just--

And your heart was pumping, and, you know, when you--

That feeling of panic, you don't feel it often,

but when you feel the adrenaline kicking in,

it's something you'll never forget.

We were on level three, and we started going down to level two.

Like, "No, everybody up. Everybody up to four.

Everybody up to four."

Go! Go!

And we also noticed around that time

the water that was coming into the carpets on the fourth floor.

So I tapped the carpet with my foot,

and then I kind of poked my husband and said,

"Look at the water on the floor."

I heard someone come into our room and say something to us.

It must have been an employee of the ship

who unlocked the door to talk to us.

He must have issued an order to evacuate in English,

but we were deep in sleep, and plus the person was speaking in English,

so we didn't understand what he was saying.

That's why we fell back to sleep.

They told us to come down to Bridge 4 which was on the fourth floor,

and we were on the 11th floor.

So I said to my daughter, "I'll get you out

into the corridor and then into the wheelchair,

but we really can't get down, and there is no lift."

I really could not go downstairs

with a walking frame, and there were no lights.

I was going to get stranded here.

Then somebody from the crew came along.

He picks her up like this.

He took off his life jacket

and hoisted me up like a sack of potatoes,

and he carried me with my waist here and my head hanging down.

I lost the walking frame, and he took me downstairs.

There were many people.

There was a whole stream of people on the stairs to Deck 4.

You are requested to gather at your muster station,

at the meeting point of Bridge 4.

Fifty meters from the shore, the ship is sinking.

And then somebody on the stairs simply yelled in English,

"Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"

Abandon ship.

Abandon ship. Abandon ship.

Keep calm. Keep calm.

Children were crying.

Women fell into the arms of their friends and husbands,

and everybody was in panic and desperate.

They all asked themselves why they could not move on,

why the staff didn't let them go downstairs.

Everybody was trying to figure out how to get out of this situation.

Could we jump in the water?

Please go to the meeting point

on Bridge 4 with your life jacket.

I repeat, put on your life jacket. Go to the muster station.

We are calmly embarking on the lifeboats. We are in front of the island of Giglio.

We could see that little part of the rocky shore all the time.

This is why I stopped him from jumping into the sea.

You don't know how close the rocks are underwater.

When you fall on a rock, you are gone as well.

Oh! They are crushing me!

They didn't lower the boat for another ten minutes,

so I was sitting in a boat, and I was shooting video

for, like, probably 15 minutes.

We was just sitting up, and we can see, like,

people is coming, like, begging to take them into the boat.

Begging, you know, to take-- "I'm the only one.

Only one person. Please take me, take me."

Yeah, it seemed to me like feeding time at the zoo.

You throw-- Or even for seagulls.

You throw a handful of chips out for seagulls,

and they're all just going, whoosh, onto it.

That's what the lifeboat was.

It was food for these people to go to, and they were just running, pushing.

Stop it! We are capsizing!

We are going to flip over! Stop it!

But then, they finally start lowering the boat.

Because, I guess, they're not using these cranes

often enough, it was, like, rusted or something's stuck,

so they really cannot pull this rail,

so they tried to unlock it, you know, but it's just not working.

Do not move! Nobody move!

But even when the crane pulled the boat

a little bit out of the ship, now they start lowering.

And they're going a little slow, slow, slow.

And then it's just dropped, like whoosh.

Hey, no, no!

The boat who was next to us was directly beneath us,

and what happened when they were lowering our boat,

it touched their roof,

and people said, "Stop!" You know? Like, "Stop, stop, stop, stop!"

No! Stop!

You know, it's scraping. They're touching.

But they stopped it just in time,

so that boat has get away, and they continue lowering us,

and that's when, you know, the boat is kept to the side,

and it starts tipping.

Well, your stomach drops. You're thinking, "What is going--

Are we gonna fall into the water?"

Okay, okay, get it. Okay, sit down!

We had to go down the next level,

so we're going down the steps 'cause the boats had gone,

and then they'd come back again,

so they were picking up more people on our side.

Water levels rise as the Concordia tips further.

I was going from side to side

trying to take the passengers and bring them to the stairs.

Then they only had to go down and get to Deck 3.

Survivors arrive on Giglio.

Just meters away, the Concordia continues to sink.

Because the ship, she would have been on 50, 55,

- maybe even 60 degrees at the time. - Yeah.

And I had crew members, though,

at each side of us, and they were actually holding us to go down,

and so that walkway was sort of half--

that was down to level three, and half that walkway

was actually underwater.

Poor baby! It's barefoot!

Then we got to the point that there were no lifeboats left,

and the ship was listing even more.

The tilt was getting a little more and more drastic.

And we went, "Okay, we've got to be faster."

And I went back up to see if there was any more people,

and I looked left. There was no one there.

Looked right, and on this lifeboat

that was stuck on Deck 3 were people trying to climb down.

I could see behind me children, women, old people

with their heads out of the windows of the lifeboat.

And beneath them, they had the sea,

and if they didn't hang on tightly, they would have fallen off.

I put one hand on the lifeboat and one hand on the side of the ship,

and they climbed down one by one,

first by putting their feet on my shoulders

and then climbing down me.

Where are we?

They know! Please, my love, keep calm!

While islanders help the survivors,

Giglio's deputy mayor heads to the boat to assist its evacuation.

I boarded the ship using the ladder that I keep calling a rope ladder.

That was at the bow of the ship on the starboard side.

It's not very easy, but it's also not impossible.

The first thing I looked for was an official,

a bridge officer who could tell me what was going on.

I spent the first 20 minutes going around looking for one,

and given that it was impossible to find someone,

I started to help people get off the boat.

Unbelievable, that is, really.

We started going up, and we all lined up on the edge

from where we could jump directly into the sea.

We were about 80 people hanging onto this banister.

We were two meters away from the water.

It was jump or wait for the sea to reach the banister.

I jumped in with both feet,

and in front of me I saw lights 50 or 60 meters away.

After swimming for 10 or 15 meters,

I turned around because I could hear a metallic noise.

The ship was clearly sinking further, making a noise.

And then the boat tilted.

Here it is! Where?

It has sank!

So there was this kind of scurry

of people who were coming through the doors

like spiders who ran back to reclaim their spot on the wall which was inclining

and avoid falling through the doors that led to the other deck.

You don't have the sense that the ship is listing.

You don't understand what is happening.

You also feel a bit helpless in this corridor.

Fear takes hold of almost everyone,

and there's a sense of not being able to walk.

I remember that well.

Initially, you would have a sense of the world spinning.

You end up lying on what will eventually become your floor,

but then you right yourself and stand on a wall

which was now the floor.

Honeymooners Gi-Duk and Hye-Jin are still in their cabin.

The sound that I can still remember vividly

wasn't that of the people.

It was the gigantic groan of the ship as it slowly tilted towards the water.

It almost seemed like the gigantic cruise liner

that we were on was sobbing.

It was only after the ship

began to tilt noticeably that we woke up.

[Hye-Jin, translated] Still, until then, I couldn't even imagine

that the ship could be sinking.

By then, most of the passengers had evacuated the ship.

We crossed the railing and walked down the hull of the ship.

It's a strange feeling when you jump over a railing

and you realize that you can actually walk down the hull

because the ship is already almost at an angle of 90 degrees.

So we walked towards that rope ladder,

which was 20 to 30 meters away from us.

I let my wife go down the ladder first and followed her closely.

She managed to jump onboard the ship of the coast guard,

who had seen us come down the ladder.

She was picked up by the coast guard.

I stayed on the rope ladder

until I was picked up maybe five or ten minutes later.

It was dangerous to climb down the hull of the ship.

It was slippery, and there was only one rope ladder to climb down.

There were about 500 people

to be taken off the ship with this one ladder

without creating a panic.

A young, athletic person could walk easily along the railing,

but there were certain elderly people who needed 15 minutes to move one meter.

Over 3,900 people are now safe.

We realized the danger we were in,

so we decided to get out as soon as possible.

The floor of the hallway was leaning severely,

so we had to walk on the wall,

but we were worried that the wall would collapse if we stepped on it,

so instead we walked along the corner where the wall and the floor meets

and worked our way to the opposite end of the hallway.

But the landing of the stairs was also tilted severely,

and there was no way we could negotiate it without slipping and sliding.

In the end, we realized that our escape routes

on either end of the hallway were blocked.

The ship has tilted over 80 degrees.

I looked at the bow of the ship,

and I saw a small group of isolated passengers,

so I tried to reach them, but the floor was quite slippery.

I decided to walk on the bulkhead that had become the floor

because of the inclination of the boat.

So I put my foot on the first door,

and I saw that the door opened outwards

so I could walk on it without any problems.

I'm sure that the others would be the same,

but one door was in fact a manhole for me,

and I found myself falling in the darkness without understanding why.

I fell for four or five meters.

Then I rolled down the stairs and probably fainted.

If the ship tilted further

and the water came into the hallway, we would be dead.

So I decided to check the water level in the ship.

I crawled towards the end of the hallway until I reached the edge of the stairs.

I had picked up a lipstick on the ground in the hallway,

so I dropped the lipstick down the stairs.

The splash came sooner than I expected.

We realized that the water was about ten meters from where we were,

and thought that the water level was rising.

I was paralyzed with fear at that moment.

That was when it hit me that we could die.

When I woke up, I found myself totally in water.

I realized that my left leg was broken.

At first, I had no idea where I was.

Then I realized that I was in the restaurant,

the Milano restaurant.

I tried to get to a dry place, but walking was very difficult.

I reached the leg of an upended table.

With lots of effort, I climbed onto it,

and I spent the night there with my legs in the water.

Experts from the fire service take over the rescue operation.

It was the first time I had ever seen a ship in that position,

and the impression was similar to what I experienced

when assisting with the beaching of a whale.

So, immediately one begins to mentally project

a film of what might be a possible way into the scene of the accident.

We began to hypothesize the flood line inside the various levels.

We also needed to understand where to enter and how to move around.

Our colleagues inside immediately informed us

of the physical difficulties of moving inside a ship

that had been constructed to be in another position altogether.

The Concordia's three kilometers of corridors

are now a deadly obstacle course.

When the sun rose, I changed position three or four times

with a lot of difficulty...

And managed to grab a sandwich that was there.

I was hungry, but it was inedible.

Fortunately, I grabbed a couple of soft drinks floating in the water.

I always tried to keep an eye

on the water level to understand how the ship was moving,

if it was listing more or not.

I kept thinking, "If the ship doesn't make strange or sharp movements,

sooner or later, someone will take me out of here."

Inside, we found corridors

that had become wells and were completely flooded,

doors that connected to rooms

that had become open traps below your feet.

This was creating a truly dangerous situation

for our colleagues inside.

I imagined our deaths would be mentioned

in a couple of lines in the corner of some newspaper in Korea.

I thought how devastated my parents would be to find out

that there daughter had died after they sacrificed so much to raise her.

The team that boarded the ship

was responsible for entering inside the ship via the corridors,

calling out in the hopes of hearing responses or receiving signals or sounds

that could lead to eventual survivors still trapped inside the ship.

For a long time, we were able to hear nothing.

Then, all of a sudden, we heard a knocking noise.

We replied to them by knocking in return.

Then they knocked back to us, so we knocked once more.

Around 9:30 p.m., a colleague onboard the ship

reported that he had heard something.

He said, "There's probably someone. We've heard something."

Well, frankly his report was so full of emotion

because it had been many hours that he'd been on the ship,

and there was a lot of emotion also for us on land.

I immediately activated all the resources we had on land at that moment--

rubber dinghies, the patrol boats--

and we all went towards the Concordia.

Then, all of a sudden, I heard voices accompanying that sound.

The rescuers were foreigners who were speaking in a foreign language,

so I couldn't understand what they were saying,

but the fact that I heard human voices made my heart skip a beat.

It was when I heard those voices that I finally became sure

that we would be able to get out of there.

Two Korean tourists in their twenties who had been trapped

on the cruise ship Costa Concordia have been rescued.

They came onboard cold and frightened.

They were terrified.

We covered them up because they had the first symptoms of hypothermia.

We headed straight to the harbor.

And they began to cry.

I slept very little because the cold was eating me up.

The lights of the rescue boats around the ship at night comforted me

because I thought that, sooner or later, someone would hear me.

The ship listing formed a kind of labyrinth

in which the walls became the floor and vice versa.

And all lower parts were full of water.

We dived into the water and went through this inundated section.

I heard some noises,

and I decided to shout so they would hear my voice.

So around 3:30, a fireman spoke to me

and asked me if I could see him since he had a flashlight.

I told him I could see him.

He told me, "Okay, we know where you are. We'll come to get you."

After that, I never saw this man again.

We had to go through areas in which,

for instance, there were trolleys balancing

on open doors right over our head.

So we evaluated the risk, and we decided that it was worth it, right?

Because there was someone to be saved.

After approximately 40, 45 minutes,

the three of us could reach the injured person.

At around 8:30, 9:00 in the morning,

I heard the sounds of the first rescuers that were coming to get me.

Finally, I hugged my rescuer who,

with a stretcher and a kind of inflatable sausage,

immobilized my leg,

tied me up on the stretcher, and took me away.

After 36 hours of loneliness, cold, and darkness,

he thought he was safe, but we knew that it wasn't the case.

Now the most difficult part of the whole rescue was starting

because we had to go back using that same route that was so difficult.

Furthermore, we had to keep him out of the water

because he would have otherwise died of hypothermia.

This was our mission, to move him without getting him wet.

So they tied me up on the stretcher and told me,

"Within an hour, you'll be out,

and we promise you you won't get wet again."

They really made a huge effort to take me out

through the labyrinth of a ship that was already listing by 90 degrees.

The ship was KO.

Throughout the journey, he did not once scream in pain.

This really energized us,

but we knew very well how serious the situation was.

I lived those three hours like a trip to-- I don't know where.

I had the feeling that I was slowly coming back to life.

It's like being born again.