Incredible stories of survival have emerged today from some of the 4,200 people on board the cruise liner which hit the rocks off the coast of the tiny Italian island of Giglio.
Fathers desperate to be with their families ignored the order that women and children should go first. There was even fighting between some passengers who tried to get on lifeboats.
Some people described it as being an 'every man for himself' situation. The Foreign Secretary William Hague said today that all British passengers and crew on board have been accounted for and are safe.
It is thought most of the 23 British passengers and 12 crew members made their way to Rome after being rescued. Eight British dancers were on-board the boat and were among the last to leave the sinking vessel, with many staying behind to help others to safety.
Among them was Rose Metcalf, who let her family know about the dramatic events in a message she left on her father's mobile phone at 3am. She said: 'Hi, Dad. Just ringing to let you know that I am alive and safe and got airlifted out of the cruise ship.
'I don't know what will happen – I don't know how many are dead. I am alive... just. I think I was the last one off.' Her story is one of dozens of incredible tales which have emerged from people desperate to flee the stricken ship.
Ms Metcalf, who joined the dance group in October, was performing in the ship's restaurant when the disaster struck at just after 9.30pm Italian time. Dressed still in her dance clothes, water started entering the boat and the lights went out.
She said: 'I dashed off to my cabin where I had dry clothes and put them on with a life-jacket. 'I went off to help calm the passengers and do a roll-call. People then started going into the boats.'
As the ship eventually began to list uncontrollably, she and four colleagues who stayed on board used a water hose to tie themselves to a handrail before being rescued by an Italian air force helicopter. She said: 'By the end, there were about five of us and we were the last to get off. We were getting ready to jump off and swim for it.
'The boat was at 90 degrees. Then the helicopter turned up. Guys came down in harnesses and took us off.'
Ms Metcalf, 22, was then taken to an air force base in Tuscany. She telephoned her father Phil early yesterday morning to let him know she was safe, although after leaving the message it was more than six hours before they spoke to each other.
Mr Metcalf revealed that at the time of the incident, his daughter was told by superiors to put on her cocktail dress and tell passengers the problem was only an electrical fault. He told BBC Breakfast: 'Luckily she ignored them, because being one of the last five people off the boat she would have been stranded there with a dress on and without a life-saving vest.'
Mr Metcalf also said the dancer revealed that the captain had abandoned the ship in the early stages of the evacuation, leaving his staff onboard. 'Since the captain had left there was nobody, so everybody was left to their own devices hence some of the chaos, so obviously the crew took it upon themselves and decided in the absence of the captain to organise and try and help people.'
One dancer told of the moment she realised something was drastically wrong - while she was trapped in a box during a magic show. Rosalyn Rincon, from Blackpool, said items from the stage suddenly fell on top of her.
The 30-year-old dancer, who is half Venezuelan, said: 'I was doing a routine in a magic show for the passengers.
'I was in the long box - like a coffin- on stage when I felt the ship run aground.
'I shouted to the magician- get me out get me out and he flipped a catch to release me .We ran to our cabins for our life vests.
'Everything on the stage had crashed onto the people watching the show and all the music had stopped it was eerie.
'My boyfriend is Italian and is one of the ship's engineering officers on board.
'He said that there had been a power black out not once but twice.
'There were 3000 passengers and 2000 staff and there were only lifeboats available on one side of the ship- that was the problem.'
She added: 'Like so many entertainers in Blackpool we work the summer shows in the town and then work the winters on cruise liners.
'I know this ship's route well - what I don't know is why it was so close to the shore.
'I can just count myself lucky.'
She phoned her mum Claire at 10.15pm on Friday to tell her the ship had hit something. Mrs Rincon, 58, said: 'When she rang she was really upset, she was still on the boat, she said "mum, the boat’s sinking".
'I couldn’t catch everything she was saying, I heard her saying she had to get her things, her laptop.
'Then she said she had to go, she had to go to try and find her friends.'
Mrs Rincon said on Saturday morning she switched on her TV and only then did she realise how serious it was.
'I got another call at 7.15am from her boyfriend, he’s an engineer on the ship but was on leave in Italy.
'He said he’d managed to speak to her on one of her friend’s phones. She couldn’t ring on hers, it had gone.
'He said that she couldn’t get to a lifeboat. Apparently she had to swim to shore, she had a life-jacket and had to swim.' Mrs Rincon said her daughter did manage a brief call home later in the day.
'She said her clothes were wet and all she had was a tinfoil blanket to keep her warm. She said she was ok and was just waiting to hear where they were going to be taken.
'I’ve got my finger crossed for all the other families, I hope things are alright for them too.'
Another dancer, Amelia Leon, 22, told how she was watching a film with her boyfriend in their cabin when she felt the ship rock to one side. She soon realised something was drastically wrong when it did not rock back and seconds later the lights went out.
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Ms Leon, who is related to a violinist who played as the Titanic went down - said she ran through corridors of screaming passengers to the deck and contemplated swimming to the shore in the pitch-black sea.
'I looked out to sea and it was so dark, all I could make out was the coast of the island, about 400 metres away.
'We were on the side which was tilting downwards and I remember asking myself: "Can I swim this if it comes to it? We were hearing about people who had jumped in the water but I couldn't see anything because it was so dark.'
Thankfully, the couple managed to board a lifeboat which took them about 10 minutes to get to shore. Once on safe ground, they realised how lucky they had been as they could see the lights of the Costa Concordia going down in the water.
Another of the eight British dancers, Sarah Hudson, 22, from Warrington, escaped in a lifeboat, from where she phoned her family. Ms Hudson said: 'I rang my Dad and said the ship's sinking but there is no problem and don't panic. They thought I was joking because it was Friday the 13th.'
Earlier on the ship, she hadn't immediately understood how bad the situation was. 'I didn't realise there was a problem until the water was coming about my feet. I thought that we had just hit a wave.
'I didn't think, until I was off the boat, that we could have died. Usually I am the first person to panic but because I had to calm the passengers, I convinced myself it was going to be all right.'
Her father, also called Phil, last night told how he and his wife Jennie had made contact with their daughter late on Friday. Mr Hudson said: 'She rang us saying she was on a lifeboat but she was amazingly calm. She had to discard her shoes before she jumped. She told us not to worry and that she was safe.'
He added: 'She has lost all her possessions. Everything she had went down with the ship.'
Kirsty Cook, another British dancer, had to get down a rope ladder to get to safety on another boat. Her mother Sandra said: 'Thank God she got off safely. She said that she was lucky to be alive and very thankful.'
Also on the vessel was retired accountant Brian Page, 63, who had paid £860 for a seven-day cruise. He was enjoying a seven-course silver service dinner when disaster struck.
He said: 'Soon everything was going everywhere – glasses, plates and cutlery. I was having to grip the table to stop it sliding away. The whole ship was rocking violently from side to side.'
Speaking of the panic on board, he said: 'People were screaming. Women and children were not getting priority at all.' He added: 'I have lost everything including my passport. I only have the clothes I am wearing.'
A honeymooner also described the 'mad rush' to flee the stricken cruise ship. British newlywed couple Ian and Janice Donoff were enjoying a magic show on the vessel when the lights suddenly went off and there was an 'incredible noise of scraping'.
He described the six-hour ordeal from when he arrived at the muster station to when he finally managed to board a life-raft and get to safety. Mr Donoff said: 'On the Tannoy came over the message that it was a generator fault and the captain said, "Everything is okay", but I understood people were running around and going back to their rooms, getting their life-jackets, perhaps putting something a bit warmer on, which I did as well.
'We then had to wait some time before they did all the different safety noises to show that we should go to a muster station, which is where you get off onto a life-raft.'
The passenger told BBC News how the boat started to list 'quite dramatically' and it took some time for crew members to count the waiting people onto the life-rafts which hung beneath them.
He said: 'The ship was at such a listing angle, and imagine us up in the air, of course there was no gravity to take it down and the life-boats couldn’t be released, which meant we had to get back.'
Mr Donoff said he and his new wife then had to shuffle along the inside of the ship, which was almost at right-angles to the sea. 'And then panic got in when we realised we had to get out onto the side of the ship which was now nearly 90 degrees,' he said.
The evacuee described how they had to use a ladder to climb through a glassless window to get outside. 'But the problem was that the floor was so slippery,' he said.
'I don’t know what they use to make it so nice and shiny but with water splashed on it, it was like a skating rink.'
He went on to describe how passengers scrambled to go up the ladder one-by-one to get outside. 'It was a mad rush for just one ladder that was there so we could get out, and once we got out, rather precariously, we had to wait while the local lifeguards came out on their boat.'
Mr Donoff and his fellow passengers then used a rope-ladder to work their way along the side of the vessel. He said: 'We had to go there on the side of the ship, bottom first, to one area, and then dangling down on the outer side of the other area to be helped into the life-rafts that was there.
'Once we could see the water and people we outside, it was fairly orderly, but it took time.'
The couple were among the last 100 people to leave the stricken ship, and they waited from 10.15 on Friday evening until 4.30am on Saturday to get rescued.
After getting to the island of Giglio, the were taken to the mainland by ferry, and then on to Rome.
Survivor John Rodford, 46, said staff gave him incorrect information as the drama unfolded while they were dining. He and his wife, Mandy, 45, were celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary on the vessel.
The couple, from Rochester in Kent, had only been on board the Mediterranean cruise ship for seven hours before disaster struck. Speaking at Heathrow airport in west London after flying back from Rome this afternoon, Mr Rodford explained how they first thought something was wrong when they were eating their dinner.
He said he heard 'a crunch', then his drink started sliding along the table.
The couple asked a crew member if there was a problem, but they were told: 'No, it's the engine.' He said: 'Then the lights went out and came back on. And then it (the ship) started going the other way, and quite a lot the other way.
'All the plates were coming off the tables and smashing, and it was just like bedlam. Everyone was getting the life jackets, but they told us to stay. They said: "It's all right, it's under control".'
The couple explained how they first went to the side of the boat the furthest from the water to escape. But because the ship had listed at such an angle, the lifeboats could not be winched down.
Mr Rodford said: 'We all got in them, and we got so far down, but we had to get back out of them.' His wife added: 'They were hitting the side of the boat. Normally they are hanging and they would release them down.
'But because the boat was like this (at an angle), as they were releasing the lifeboats they were hitting the side so they were stuck.
'I couldn't believe it. I was sitting in the lifeboat, and when I realised the lifeboat was going nowhere, we got out, but where the lifeboat had dropped, we had to climb out, so we had to climb and lower ourselves down.
'The men were trying to help the women down. I'm looking over the side and I'm thinking 'I'm going to have to jump in that water', and I hate the water.'
They described sliding down the corridors across the width of the ship to reach the starboard side, which was closest to the water. Mr Rodford said: 'Through the middle of the boat, we could see the lifeboats, so literally as a slide we came through the boat to the other end.
'We went on one boat on top of a boat, and then down into another boat and within two minutes we quickly had to go because it (the ship) went down more then.'
The couple chose a cabin on the sixth floor without a window, because of Mrs Radford's fear of water, and their room was on the side of the ship submerged in the sea. Mr Rodford joked: 'The little mermaid's got all my belongings. The lot!'
Asked if they would consider taking another cruise in the future, Mr Rodford said: 'I'm not going on a cruise again.' His wife added: 'Never, ever, ever.'
Giuseppe D'Avino, a pastry chef from Modena, told The Sunday Telegraph: 'There was a lot of panic, screams, children crying,' he said. 'Some passengers came to blows as they tried to get in the lifeboats.'
Also speaking to the newspaper, Fabio Costa, a crewmate, said: 'We were giving priority to kids and women and trying to leave the men until last, but they were not accepting it because it was their families.'
Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles 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.
'Have you seen 'Titanic'? That's exactly what it was,' she said.
'We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,' her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61 said. '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.'
Her daughter Valerie whispered: 'I wonder where they are.'
Sumber:KOMPAS.com
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