I’ve been following the Costa cruise ship sinking in the news and on the web. As an ex cruise ship employee with NCL & RCCL I must say that it seems that the Costa crew were badly trained, I hope this doesn’t apply to all of Costa’s crew fleet wide. As far as I can remember all the cruise ships I was on held a mandatory passenger boat drill before the ship set sail to ensure the passengers knew exactly where to go in case of an emergency. This was a requirement of the US Coast Guard and was followed regardless of where we were in the world. I was also trained as a lifeboat commander complete with fire fighting skills as well.
The only time I was involved in an actual emergency was when my Greek run RCL ship caught fire while docked in Singapore. Unfortunately one of the Greek officers was seriously burnt while fighting the fire. No passengers were harmed but as crew we all noted that it took a really long time for the emergency signal to be sounded, despite the heavy smell of smoke through out the ship. If we had been out at sea the outcome could have been very different.
I think Costa’s crew training will be closely scrutinized after this cruise ship sinking, they should do it themselves before they are told to by authorities or no one will want to sail with them and Costa will go bankrupt. The Captain should have had the passengers on deck ready with the life boats ready to be launched as soon as the ship started listing. It seems like crew not knowing what to do was endemic through out the ship, a disaster waiting to happen.
As for why closing of the water tight doors (if they where actually closed at all) could not limit the amount of water taken on board I don’t know. It was stated that there was a power outage but all doors can be closed manually on a cruise ship too. As for hitting what ever they did they must have been off course some how, despite how many times the cruise ship had done that route in the past.
I’m going to keep following this Costa cruise ship sinking to find out what the actual cause was and I think it may involve a lot of human error.
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