Concordia (Harmony)

Imagine living in a place like this.  Idyllic isn’t it?

Wonder then how it must feel to wake up one morning and find this outside your window … and not just for one day either L

The wonderful view you are used to completely obliterated. Enough to put you off your morning coffee I should imagine. Vito told me a couple of weeks ago that he was going to Giglio on business. 

“Take your camera” I cried, “take some photos for the blog!  See if you can speak to some locals, how have their lives been affected by the Concordia arriving on their doorstep?”

“What about my work?” he replied.

“What about it?”

He knows when to take a hint. These terrific photos are down to him (thank you amore J XXX ) What struck me first when I saw them was how massive and how intrusive the ship was.

 Nor had I realised how close Captain Francesco Schettino had steered the Concordia to “salute” the island.   The boat is now upright, as you can clearly see (if you can’t look at the brown watermark on this photo down the middle of the ship) although still partially submerged in 50 ft (15 metres) of water.   

32 people and crewmen died because of one man’s stupidity.  L

Vito got talking to a local woman and asked her how the incident had affected tourism on Giglio. (Giglio has always been a popular destination even during times of recession).   She explained the nature of tourism had changed.  “Tourists still come in droves”, she told Vito, “however the ferry loads of day-trippers flock to the island to take photos of the stricken ship and then go back again. No one stays”.  So bars around the port fare well enough and overall little has changed (except perhaps the view),

but more distant places have fewer visitors. Hotels are jammed packed for months ahead, not with tourists, but people working on the salvage operation. Vito found it impossible to find a vacant room anywhere and had to stay on the mainland when he was working there. What was this woman most fed up with?  “The experts”!  Apparently “they keep spouting nonsense, especially the environmentalists” was this lady’s opinion.  For example they rabbit on about detergents leaking out of their container bottles into the sea and contaminating the ocean.  “How”, the lady wanted to know, “was that about to happen when we are always being told plastic bottles are not biodegradable for hundreds of years!” (Certainly the sea looks pristine in Vito’s photos).

Schettino is despised; not so much for steering the ship too close to the island, but for his reversal of the “women and children first, Captain last” rule. His cowardice is viewed as disgraceful and beneath contempt, not only on Giglio, but also in Schettino’s native Naples where Vito heard plenty of similar comments when he was there a couple of weeks ago. Being made to walk the plank would be too good for him.  A sad tale all round, for the devastated families who lost loved ones, for the islanders whose lives have been so rudely interrupted, and for the holiday makers who should have had fun but ended up taking part in a tragedy.  Looking at these pictures though I really feel the salvage masters from Titan Salvage and Micoperia are true heroes.  What a fantastic job they have done of raising the Concordia.  If you want to know more about the Costa Concordia, click here