Stuff You Should Know - The Wreck of the Costa Concordia

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

It’s astounding that with the exceptional navigational equipment aboard a cruise ship can run aground in the 21st century, and 32 passengers and crew can lose their lives within a thousand feet of land. Such is the power of incompetence and cowardice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and we will see you in your great seats in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and we're just sailing along. Hopefully we're not going to stop abruptly for this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, you know, we were actually developing a robust suite of maritime disasters. Well, there's plenty to talk about for sure. So this is, I mean, we're probably mid-sweet at best. Psh, I mean, depending on which ones you cover, we could be, uh, no pun intended, just the tip of the iceberg.

Ooh, that was pretty good, though. And it's funny to bring up the iceberg, which everybody knows is associated with the Titanic, because I have seen, according to maritime lore that I found on the internet, written by maritime lawyers, that this shipwreck, essentially, that we're going to talk about, is a new touchstone for the next 100 years, just like the Titanic was for the 100 or so years after it. It was just that much of a cluster. Luckily, not anywhere near as many people died, but it's not maybe not as interesting a story,

but it's a pretty gosh darn toot an interesting story if you ask me. Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing that stood out to me about the wreck of the Costa Concordia is that, and you know, when you see little documentary footage and stuff like that of interviews of people, many of the passengers are remarking like, you know, we just couldn't believe like something like this is happening in 2012, like the fact that it's a modern disaster, all the Titanic, like that kind of thing

shouldn't be happening these days. Yeah, and I saw somebody who compared the two described it as where the Titanic was kind of like an ironic twist of fate brought on by hubris. Yeah, this was just brought on by incompetence. That's what it really boils down to. Yeah, I mean, that's how something like this can happen in a modern age where everything is there

to prevent something like this from happening. Exactly. But you can never count out human incompetence. No, no, and you said modern age and it was pretty modern. So on the night of Friday the 13th January in 2012, not that long ago, just over a decade, that ship, the Costa Concordia, was sailing around the Mediterranean, which it normally did. I think it was launched in 2005 by the Costa Crociere, also known as Custer Cruz's line. And at the time, it was the largest ship

in the Mediterranean. It boasted the nicest spa took up two full decks. And it was just nice. It looks, if you look at the pictures of what it looked like when it was launched, it looks like 1998 Vegas came along and threw up and just shipped it out to sea. Yeah, not like the super classy ones these days.

Right, but this one struck me as, I mean definitely a long that same line. I mean, a cruise ship has a certain look to it, no matter what they try to do. Yeah, there's going to be brass. This one, this one really like pulled out all the. Is our organ playing friends sometimes say? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was sort of the pride of Italy. It was their largest cruise ship at 950 plus feet long. And held almost 3,800 passengers, along with just over 1,000 crew members for a total on this day, or on this launch at least,

of 4,229 total people, Captain by Francesco Scatino, who had been, he was a veteran, he had been working just for this cruise company for 11 years. Yeah, I think he was fairly new to the Concordia, but like their ships were similar enough that this was not, I mean, sure, yeah, he was totally able and capable to captain ship, you'd think. Yeah. So three hours after the Concordia set sail for its seven-day cruise

around the Mediterranean, which was, that's just what it did. It stopped in the same place. Yeah, three hour tour. It was passing by an island off of Tuscany called Gileo, which you can't help but just think of that been apholic movie. So what I thought of. And Captain Skatino did something that in retrospect, people are like, what did you do? But once you start to dig into it, you're like, apparently that's a thing.

Like cruise ships sometimes do this. It's called the sail by. He decided to do a sail by of the island of Gileo. Gileo is a seafaring fishing island of like hearty sea people and then very wealthy people who like to hang out around hardy sea people And not many though no 1500 people total right around the whole island Yeah multiple towns the whole population of the island was 1500 So um kept in skitino decided to do a sail by of Gio and a sail by is where you sail

like The Latino decided to do a sail-by of Gileo, and a sail-by is where you sail like preposterously close to land. To do a couple of things, it thrills the passengers on board, but it also thrills the people wherever you're passing by. It's pretty neat, like it's just so close and the ship's always lit up very pretty and all that stuff. It's just something to see.

But if you stop and think about it, it's incredibly reckless. I mean, to do the sale by, he had to deviate from his course so much that he had to turn off like the tracking software, like just turn it off so that he could maneuver the ship by hand off course that drastically. Yeah. And you know what? I'm going to go ahead and say, I mean, this is like a flyby that airplanes might do, and those have resulted in accidents here and there. I'm just going to go ahead and throw it out there that no more sailbys or flybys just

keep all of the dangerous, heavy machinery and vehiculars. vehiculars? Sure. Sure. Well away from everything. You know, it's always like, oh, the people love it. This would be impressive until there's an accident and it's like, oh, wait a minute. Well, people can die doing this.

So let's just stop with this stuff. Yeah. And no more car surfing like they didn't teen wall for footloose. None of that stuff either. Yeah. But the one thing, the game of chicken and footloose, just full steam ahead with that. That's a pretty great thing to do.

Okay. So, so the sale buy, again, this is an enormous ship, a thousand feet long basically, 114,000 tons. It's a giant, enormous ship, and it's passing by this tiny little island, and it was doing it for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons why Giliot used to get sailbys fairly frequently.

Apparently they'd done it just a week before. Was that there is a retired captain from the Costa cruise line, I guess he'd been there for like ever and a retire and now lived on Giliot. So they would do sailbys and impart and to salute him. That was one thing. And you think we're going to the horn basically. There was also a matri-dee on board named Antonello Tievoli. He was from Gileo and he had family there.

So apparently the captain was doing this as a favor or an honor to the matri-dee. And then thirdly, the passengers love that kind of thing too. They're just dazzled by how close the land is, like you could just reach out and touch it kind of thing. Yeah, and this is later in court what Skitino would say. Like these were the three reasons. There was, and I don't super remember this for some reason, or I didn't at least until we got to this point,

which was there was an affair going on between Captain Skatino and a woman named Dominica and how do you pronounce that last name? I'd say Simerton. Simerton or something like that, C-E-M-O-R-T-A-N. Yes, he was Moldovan. Who had worked on the ship the month before, like a short-term thing, evidently, had met Captain Skatino. They started this affair.

She was on board. She was 26 years old and was on board for this cruise as a passenger. As an unpaid passenger, kind of like, you know, come on as my guest type of deal. Right. Because we're having an affair. And so prosecutors would say, Hey, you wanted to impress your girlfriend that you were having an affair with. So that's why you did it. And this is when it all kind of clicked. I kind of remembered all of a sudden that became a big deal in the trial and the

news was the kind of the public outing of this relationship. And you know, cruise ship crashes because captain's trying to impress his young girlfriend. Yes, and she was on the bridge at the time during this incident. And like I said, they had done a sale by the week before of Gileo, Captain Skatino did again to honor Antonello T'evoli, the matradee.

And after that last one, he had set some crew members to the task of figuring out an even closer sale by route. This was the one they were testing out. So they had sale by Gileo before, but apparently this is a brand new even closer route. And I guess they had gotten that retired C-captain on the phone to tell them about the sail by they were doing and Found out that he wasn't even on the island. He was back on the mainland at his winter house and

As they were now you're down to two reasons right exactly and as they're on the phone captain Skatino is like say Let me ask you a little bit about the rocks around Gio that we're driving past right now. And I guess the captain didn't even get any kind of reply out before the line went dead. And they think that at that moment, the line hadn't actually gone dead, but that captain Cattino had hung up because he realized that they were about to hit a rock on their port side. Port is left, the easiest way to remember that is left has four letters

and port has four letters and they both end in T. Two great ways to remember that. Starboard right, you know. Port left. It's just two things to remember though. It's not that hard. So I always have trouble with it. So they're driving by Julio and they're keeping away from these rocks on their starboard side, on the right side. What they didn't realize is that they're actually driving through two outcroppings of rocks and the one on the left side, the port side got them. Yeah, these are called the Skull Rocks, SEOL and you know, they're all over the place and you can't necessarily see them all sticking out of the water. And at, you know, the last moment basically, he orders a course correction, Skatino does. The helmsman at the time was an Indonesian man named Jacob Rusly bin and went the wrong

way because there was a language issue. Put a pin in that because that'll come back up later in court. And the stern collided at 9.45 and the timeline is pretty important here So 9.45 pm is when they first make contact and tear a 174 foot Gash in the port side of that ship. Yeah Later on as as we'll see in court there there were experts that basically said, hey listen, there was no course correction at that point that would have mattered. They were just too close.

Yeah. So it wasn't the fact that this guy went the wrong way. It's not like all Jacob Bins fault. So that would come out later, but immediately, a 174 foot tear in the side of the ship is an immediate disaster as far as how much water this thing is taking on very, very fast. Yeah. And I mean, just to put it in sports terms, that's like half the length of a soccer pitch or an American football field.

Like, that's a really long tear. And it was really deep. And it ran so hard into the rocks chuck, and 80 tonne boulder became embedded in that tear in the ship and was there forever permanently. Apparently they later on removed it and are using it as part of a memorial, but it was this huge boulders, huge, huge tear and it also was in a terrible place. It hit some watertight compartments to clean into them. So now these watertight compartments are starting to take on water, not good for any ship. But one of those compartments was also the engine room.

And in very short order, the engine room started to flood and they lost power very, very quickly. It was very clear right at the outset that they had a huge problem going on. Yeah, and when you say lost power, like they lost electricity, but they also lost engine power. The engine was off. The rudder wasn't operable.

All the lights went out. Now they're in the dark. They can't do anything engine-wise to try and pry themself off or anything like that. Skatino did, it seemed like, I do a fairly decent job, steering it, I guess gliding it in, just steering it on inertia or whatever, toward the port side to at least get it a little closer, which they say might have helped save some lives, but it caused the ship to tip even more. And that was a big factor in how many people ended up dying

was the fact that this boat started, it turned on its side, basically, not completely on its side. What was the degree in the end? 70 degrees. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty close to 90. Yeah, I mean, zero degrees is upright. 90 degrees is completely on its side. This was ended up listing to 70 degrees. So yeah, for all intents and purposes, if you were on that ship, it was basically on its side, right? Yeah. And the idea that Skatino managed to navigate the ship, so the ship was still moving,

they just didn't have any power. It was moving under momentum when the power went out. And the scary thing was, it was starting to head out to sea with 174 foot gash in the side, taking on water. And it had it kept going out to sea. It would have sunk and possibly a lot more people died. Yeah, for sure. The bone of contention is whether Skatino did anything or not.

Some maritime experts later on said he didn't do a thing that rudder got stuck in the perfect position and managed to do it. Yes, it did 180 degree turn thanks to the wind and the rudder and miraculously turned around and came back to land rather than deep water where it kind of wedged itself against the rocks. He probably didn't have anything to do with it. Although he tried to claim that because they're like, that probably saved lives. Well, I will say this, if Skitino said it was me that did it, then I'm immediately inclined to not believe it. That is a good rule of thumb with this guy. Yeah. Shall we take a break?

Yeah, we should. All right, that's a good setup. This cruise ship is taking on water. It's listing with everyone on board, and we're going to come back and tell you what happened right after this. Stuffy should know. Josh and Sean. Stuffy should know. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner, Rob called me, so let Ado Bryan and ask me what I knew about this

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No. I would have immediately called for help, but that didn't happen. Katino did not call for help immediately. I think he knew that he had really screwed up. And I'm not sure if he immediately knew just how bad things were. I would say the listing of the boat would have been a real key indicator that it's much worse than like anyone could have imagined. He also got word almost immediately that the engine room was flooding. Yeah, so he knew how bad it was pretty quickly. The reason that the authorities on land,

and even knew this was happening is because they're right there off the shore. So people on the ship are calling to shore. And people on land see this happening. And they're like, hey, this cruise ship is, they're only 1 this cruise ship is there only 1500 people But it was it was a big thing and I imagine it made tons of noise they talked about the sound of The scraping like how loud it was and how like scary sounding it was So the long and short of it is a search and rescue called them at 10 p.m 15 minutes later and Skatino kind of downplayed it a little bit. Yeah, first he was probably like lettering, just lettering, they'll go right. However, because this is modern times, and one of the great things about something like this happening in modern times is you have recordings of phone calls and stuff that you can go to,

you can't just, you know, it's not like the Titanic days when you could lie about something and maybe get away with it. So they recorded this call between crisis coordinator Roberto Ferrarini from Costa Cruz's in Scatina, where he finally admits I've made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding. Yet still at 10-10 ten this is almost thirty minutes later uh... the coast guard is calling again and they finally learned that it's taking on water almost a half hour later

yeah because the guy he admitted it to like you said it was he worked for cost of cruises he's like the guy you call when at when everything is just hit the fan and so it he he didn't like the first call they were like no just tell them it's a blackout and that's what they told the coast guard It wasn't for till that second call where they like yeah, we're taking it on water Why don't you send us a tugboat one tugboat that's all they requested Luckily people on shore had gotten word that there was something weird going on and they started to move down the ball So yeah, basically they started to move down the ball. Yeah, basically, they started to move down toward the rack and it became immediately clear

that there was a huge problem. The ship was starting to tilt. It was way closer to the land than it should be. Apparently, it came to rest a thousand feet from land. That's how close it was. It looked even closer. It does. You see the wreck footage.

For sure. It's really, really close to the rec footage. For sure. It's really, really close to land. And that there were plenty of people on board. So they started rushing to the accident scene in boats and eventually by helicopters and calling in the people they needed. And again, the ship is not asking for this stuff. Other people are being like,

you guys need this stuff, we're coming because Skatino was trying to downplay it to save his reputation and that crisis coordinator was trying to save the company's reputation. Yeah, so rescue boats finally arrive at 1040. This is almost, this is 55 minutes later, almost an hour after this thing hits these rocks. You finally get rescue boats and Skatino. Finally, it gives the order to abandon ship. Some people had already taken upon themselves

to get the life boats going, because the writing was on the wall. And then something happened that is really hard to believe that A, he did it and B, he thought he could get away with it. But at 1120, Skatino, abandon B, he thought he could get away with it. But at 11, 20, Skitino, abandoned ship. The captain of the ship, the captain is, the oath, well, I don't know if they take enough, but they probably do, let's just say it's at least figurative.

The oath of the ship. The captain is supposed to go down with the ship and be like the last person off. You know, they're in charge. They're the ones that are supposed to make sure everything is as least chaotic as it can be. And Skatino's ski dattles at 1120. And in court later, he basically got laughed at, said that he had fallen off the ship and landed in a lifeboat. Yeah. And they're like, well, why didn't you get back off?

He's like, I don't know. I didn't want to. Yeah, I was in there. Yeah, they were marked that when he made it to land, that he wasn't even wet. But just to get across like how badly he abandoned the ship, he said, abandon ship at 11 and was off within 20 minutes himself.

The local authorities didn't mark the evacuation He said, a bandage ship at 11 and was off within 20 minutes himself. The local authorities didn't mark the evacuation as complete until about 5 a.m. That's how he abandoned almost everybody on that ship, just left. And what's crazy is his crew, like the higher up crew, left with him. They didn't leave anyone in charge. There was a total power vacuum. And there was a really big problem too that they had. So at the time, under maritime law,

if you had a cruise ship within 24 hours of departing, you had to run through your emergency evacuation drill with the passengers and the crew. Have you ever been on a cruise ship? I've been on one cruise and it's a total buzzkill, but the very first thing you do is they gather everyone in this huge room and go over all that stuff. Yes, it's a game. You've got to pass muster.

It's the last thing you want to do when you first get on a cruise ship. But before, I guess they kind of acknowledged that and said, just some time within the first 24 hours, after the cost of concordia, they're like, you have to do that before you even set sail now. But they had- Before you have your first run punch. Exactly. They hadn't even done that yet.

So not only did the passengers not know what was going on, not only was there literally no one in charge, but much of the crew was reported to have basically been throwing elbows to get on lifeboats themselves, ones that were stepping up and trying to lower lifeboats clearly didn't know how to do it. Apparently, there was a retired sailor who was on board as a passenger who basically shoved one of the crew members out of the way to lower the lifeboat himself because the crew member was so incompetent at it.

So from top to bottom, from captain to passenger, no one essentially knew what to do. They just knew that the ship was tilting at some really scary angles and water was starting to come up and all of a sudden what used to be the walls were now the floor, what used to be the other wall is now the ceiling and what used to be the floor and the ceiling are now walls.

That's how much the ship had tilted. I can keep going. I can tell you, like the carpeting went from the floor to the wall. If you keep going, this ship's going to be upright again. They needed you there just to explain things. That brass railing you use as a hand rail, you could dangle from it. It's at the ceiling. It's at the fireman's bowl.

Exactly. Yeah. And the other really scary thing about it is aside from that, that you're lucky if you're in a deck that's just like that. There's also corridors that go from one side of the ship to the other. Those are no vertical shafts. I saw it put. There was a really great shafts.

Yeah. Essentially that you could fall into and all of a sudden you're falling to the other side of the ship. It was like the Poseidon adventure halfway. It's like whatever TV show you were watching all of a sudden was almost upside down. You would have to dangle from the floor, which is now the ceiling to watch the TV appropriately. That's right. So after midnight, the Coast Guard captain there, Gregorio de Falco, called Scatino. And again, these are recorded phone calls, which is great.

And at that point, Scatino is in that lifeboat. And there was a very dramatic conversation that they had, and which was played later on where DeFalco says, you got to return to that vessel, pal. You're the captain and you oversee this evacuation. It's chaos and you should be up there in charge. And he became sort of a local folk hero in Italy. And there was a line that he had, which Libya helped us with this, so she puts it kind

of nicely. A PG translation is, get back on the board, dammit. This was printed on t-shirts and it was sold in Italy. It became a very big part of the trial. Skatino didn't do it. He was like, nope, not going back on. By 1240, so this is almost three hours later uh... there were twenty five control boats fourteen merchant vessels

and those helicopters on the scene and uh... i think by you know by this time the ship was uh... listed so severely that they'd lost like all of the port side lifeboats they couldn't even launch those so you're dealing now with half the lifeboats as well. Yeah, the floors, now walls. But the reason why you couldn't do the lifeboats shut because on the portside, rather than being the side of the ship, that was now skyward.

That was like the top of the ship. How are you going to lower a lifeboat like that? You can't do it. Luckily, they got apparently 23 of the 26 lifeboats launched before it just became impossible to launch the last three. But it should be enough for all the people, right? It should have been. And I think it was, but the whole thing was done so disorderly, people were shuffled from one place to another. Yeah. Of course. And 32 people ended up dying. And most of them, I should say most of the drowning deaths apparently occurred around the same moment. And that is so the ship was listed at 20 degrees.

You can work with that, but your dishes are sliding off of your tables and stuff like that. Nothing you want to really deal with, but you can manage. And it started to list, it made it to about 50 degrees. Now it's a real problem. I think about then they couldn't launch any of the boats. But then from 50 degrees, it started to list to 70 degrees, where it's almost completely on its side.

And that happened quickly enough that people who had been on the starboard side and said, no, life boats, full, go to the port side, were actually caught in between the two inside interior rooms, and now all of a sudden, water's coming up from the walls in the floor, and you're trapped inside a room that you can't swim out of. And I guess I think 11 or 16 people died that way,

just getting caught when the ship listed and the water started to come up. And it happened almost all at once. So you can make a really good case that had they not delayed this rescue. Had they initially called for help immediately? They probably would have gotten everybody off of that ship before it listed to 70 degrees.

And all those people who drowned in the center of the ship almost certainly would have lived. Yeah, absolutely. We talked about all of the upper tier crew getting off on the lifeboats with the captain. That left, and Livia helped us with this, and she found some pretty great examples of heroes of this situation.

That left, and some of them actually did rescue people. That left musicians and waiters and bartenders. To help these are these are not crew members that are trained, you know, to run the cruise ship. These are people serving you food and drinks or playing the drums. That was a a drummer, a Giuseppe, Jiro Lamo, he's 30 years old. He had a spot on that last lifeboat

but he gave it up for a family with two kids uh... he perished a bartender named Erica uh... funny sorria mollina uh... gave up her life jacket to an elderly man and uh... perished you know once this thing is moving around in like the current around something like this uh... you know before it's stationary are Vast and I imagine once it isn't even is stationary

Just all the the transfer of air and water and a vacuum of water being sucked in like it's very perilous water that you're getting into so a lot of these people died by you know jumping in the water to try to swim to shore, but they were just kind of sucked under and kept there. Yeah, and they may have made it, had they kept their life jackets, but for one reason or another, they gave their life jackets away to save other people. So yeah, that was extraordinarily sad. There was a lot of valiant efforts, including from people who survived too. One of the heroes of the story was the deputy mayor of Gileo Porto, I think the main town. He was on it. Yeah. Yeah. He was the one who

basically filled that power vacuum. He went and was working side by side with I think the chief navigator, a guy named Simone Canessa, who was the one who was ordered to lie to the Coast Guard when they first called. Those two worked to get a couple hundred people off of the ship that were stuck on it when it listed to 70 degrees, and they were doing things like they found an aluminum ladder chuck, and you basically had to climb it to get to the railing of one of the decks. Because again, it's at 70 degrees and don't get me started about what's a wall and what's a floor.

But they were basically using this ladder in the exact opposite direction that you normally would. And when you would get up to the top of the layer, you had to climb over the deck railing. Now you're on the port side hole of the ship and you had to scoot down tens and tens of feet using a rope ladder and then jump the last three to five feet onto a waiting rescue boat. And like 110 people managed to survive by using this exit that Kinesa and the deputy mayor managed to organize. Yeah, I mean, to drive it home, this deputy mayor, who was, you know, probably just easing in for a late dinner on his cozy island, as Skatino is bailing off the ship, this guy

is getting aboard the ship. He was the first one from that island to get out there and say, I'm getting on board that ship to help people as the captain has bailed in a lifeboat. Yeah, it's a really great point out for sure. They may have even passed one another. Yeah, so you said 150, I'm sorry, 32 people died, 150 people were injured, 65 very seriously injured. We're talking partial paralysis. Those one case of blindness, amputations, obviously a lot of people that suffered from PTSD afterward. It took to 6 a.m. the next morning for everybody, everyone to be evacuated that was still alive, as we'll see, there were very sadly some bodies that they would find in the months as far as recovery of the

dead goes during the operation to save this or not save the ship, but to save the environment from the ship basically. Yeah, that was a huge thing. So they went from rescuing people to recovering remains to preventing a maritime environmental catastrophe of unparalleled proportions from happening. Because this ship had 2600, I think, tons of fuel and oil and hydraulic lubricants and all sorts of stuff that would love to give back in the water.

Yeah, on board. And it was just waiting, all that ship had to do is start to crack up. And it was laying against some rocks at a 70 degree angle. No one knew how much pressure it was having exerted in the middle. Was it going to break in half at the rock like the rocks going to be a full-crumb? They had no idea. They just knew that they needed to get that oil out of that ship as fast as possible. So that was also one of the one things they were doing while they were simultaneously

searching for remains. Yeah, so not only the fuel, and we should point out that this is Gilios inside the Pelagos Sanct sanctuary, the largest marine wildlife park in the Mediterranean, just an amazing place. You've got this oil and then you have everything on the ship, all kinds of plastics, all kinds of chemicals, all kinds of nasty stuff, all kinds of food, apparently the food spoilage like they were right in the middle of dinner service. So, not only all the food that they were serving for dinner, which, you know, for a

cruise ship, if you've ever been to a dinner service, it's just more food than you can ever imagine, basically. But all the food, you know, the freezers are bursting. All the food that's on the ship, it's at the very beginning of this cruise, so it's fully stocked. And so, that was an environmental environmental disaster attracting all kinds of sea life Making you know that the runoff effect of that is you have people who make their living Fishing on this tiny island like many many people do that and all of a sudden their industry is wrecked

For a while because this ship you know to make a long story short It ended up laying there for about two and a half years Yeah, and it was a environmental disaster and that Nova documentary sent me. Nova did it. It's 53 minutes long and it's what was called sunken ship rescue. It is, if you have a PBS subscription, it is worth your time to watch the documentary on the salvage operation on this thing because it is unbelievable what humans can think of. The ingenuity of humans to take an unprecedented situation like this and figure out how to safely get that boat out of

there was just never seeing like it. Well, let's talk about a couple more things before the salvage. We'll take a break and then come back and talk some salvage about that. Let's do it. Well, let's talk about a couple more things before the salvage. We'll take a break and then come back and talk to them salvage. How about that? Let's do it. So in addition to like the food that they're having to float past, the divers who are looking for remains and apparently also, they found three people alive who were trapped after the evacuation was complete. One was the ship's cursor who had fallen into a restaurant because it was sideways and he was trapped there for 36 hours. And then another was a Korean couple who were on their honeymoon who got trapped in their cabin.

So there was like, wow, we found some live people. It really made them redouble their diving efforts. And it was really dangerous diving through this stuff. There's bed sheets that you could get wrapped up in as a diver. There were knives floating around coming towards you. Just tons of debris, chandeliers hanging over you that could just drop it any minute. It was a bad jam as far as diving goes and there's some really amazing footage of divers swimming through the the wreckage That the Italian police

Posted that you can go see I would strongly recommend going to check that out, but as they're doing all this They finally I think cleared everybody but two People there were two bodies that they they just were like we can't find them right now. We need to get the salvage operation underway and they started to do that. All right you want to take the break now? Yeah I feel like yeah we'll be right back everybody. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner, Rob called me, so let Ado Bryan and ask me what I knew about this crime. I know 60 years later, new leads are still emerging. To me, an award-winning

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jiselle and Robin, and we're the host of Reasonably Shady on the Black Effect Podcast Network. I absolutely love our podcast. Yes, it has been so much better than I expected. Yes, because we get to share our lives with everyone. They get to learn about us. This is the podcast that you want to listen to, just to feel like you're in the living room with your girlfriends, you're driving the car with your girlfriend, you're having that good girlfriend

talk. Sometimes we say things that like you want to say, but you can't say out loud. We're like speaking your mind for you, but you're scared to say it, but we're gonna say it. We do hot topics. We talk about reasonable and shady things. So get into it. Get into it and join us every Monday for reasonablyably Shady and be sure to tune into the latest season of the Real Housewives of Potomac. Subscribe to Reasonably Shady on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So Chuck, I think September 2013, almost, geez, this is just January 2012. So more than a year, almost two years after the wreck, the boat's just been laying there on its side in the wreck. The boat's just been laying there on its side in the water. 500 people came together to get this thing upright again. And it was like just a

crazy idea because other people are like, no, we're going to have to demolish this thing in the water with explosives. There's nothing we can do. And some people are like, no, we can float it again. And they did. They managed to figure out a way, I'm using a technique called turnbuckling that got the ship back upright. Power buckling. Power buckling. It's like turnbuckling, but for giant ships. Yeah. I mean, I think initially, I mean, the reason it took almost two years is they were coming up with a plan to do this. Right. So, like, when they hit the ground running in September 2013, initially, they were going to try and cut it into pieces, which is a method that's been used before, but there were

like, there's no way we can do that without, you know, causing more environmental mess. And that's, that's the kind of thing. When you, when something like this happens these days, the environment takes precedent, and you have to do it in such a way that, like you said, you don't blow it up, and you don't cut it into pieces and wreck the local environment. So they had to figure it out.

And I mean, I suggest watching that documentary. It's amazing. They ended up building these huge platforms underwater that the boat would sit on once they rolled it back upright. But the whole rolling it upright process was fraught with peril of the boat breaking apart, no one knew what exerting that kind of pressure to kind of pull this thing back over these huge steel cables would take.

So it was, it's amazing. There were a lot of very tense moments, but they did manage to get this thing upright and floating and towed it away with tug posts. Yeah, it was an engineering marvel. Apparently they had lasers and microphones and everything on all over the ship to make sure it wasn't settling or moving at any point still. Well, it had become part of the rock over that time too,

which is a very tense moment in the Nova Special because when it was go time, that's when they realized it was like, the rock over that time too, which is a very tense moment in the Nova special because when it was go time, that's when they realized it was like it is now attached to the seabed in places. And they were like, we don't know what's going to happen. And it dislodged and it actually worked out, but it was very, very tenuous there for a little while. So they got it upright.

And after that, apparently it opened up parts of the ship to exploration that hadn't been available before. It was just too dangerous. And they found the remains of the second to last missing victim, Maria Grazia Tricarci, Tricarici. She was celebrating her 50th birthday with a friend and her daughter when she died. She and her friend died. Her daughter survived.

And there was just one last person to be found after that. And they didn't find him, his name was Russell Rebello. He was another hero who gave away his life jacket to save someone else and was- He was a waiter, I think, right? He was a waiter. And he was organizing people to get out of there, he's helping people get off of the ship

and died as a result and I once they floated the ship and towed it back to Genoa for recycling. They were just turning it into scrap 144,000 tons of scrap The people doing that project Found the remains of Russell Rebello and a cabin behind some furniture and on the eighth deck. He had just been trapped there the whole time that the boat was underwater and they found

him after it was in the shipyard in Drydock. Yeah, obviously the legal fallout from this was pretty broad. Skatino was dubbed Captain Coward by the media in Italy. And on January 15th, actually two days after, the prosecutor came forward confirming the events as we have detailed. Two days after that, they placed Skatino under house arrest. Obviously, that audio with Defalco was released, very damning evidence. And then July 2013, that crisis coordinator, Ferrerini, who was on the phone with Skatino, four members of the crew, pled guilty. They took a plea bargain basically where

they pled guilty to manslaughter, got sentences from one and a half years to close to three years, including Jacob Rusley-Binn, who was the helmsman, who steered the wrong way. And Skatino says, oh, this pleadial sounds like a pretty good thing. I'd like to get in on that. And they're like, oh no, no. There's no ple plea deal for you. You're going to go to full trial on a man slaughter charge causing the wreck and abandoning ship.

And they opened it up into a 1000 seat court theater basically in Tuscany so people could go and watch this play out in person. It was a huge, huge international spectacle. The trial was two years, basically, 19 months. It's pretty rare that somebody who's roundly vilified isn't in some way being unfairly vilified, but Skatino is one of those rare people where he totally deserved every bit of scorn and disdain that was heaped upon him and still heaped upon him. He was a national embarrassment for Italy, but just an international snake as far as everybody else was concerned. And from what I can tell, I'm like, surely there's something this guy did

that was like, oh, actually, he did this. Nope, it does not exist, which is you just don't run into that very often. Yeah. He was sentenced to 16 years. He appealed. That appealed was upheld in May 2017 and he is currently serving that sentence. There are people in I'm glad Livia pointed this out. I don't think anyone like you said is defending Skatino, but there was more scoring heaped upon coast to cruises as a whole because they pointed out things like, you know, I said put a pin in the fact that there was a language barrier between the helmsman about which way to steer. Like, they're like, that shouldn't happen.

There shouldn't be a language barrier between who's steering the ship and the captain of the ship. You got to work that out. There were safety and evacuation procedures that were basically either not known or ignored. And that falls on the company to some degree for sure. And then there were a few technical things. There were some, I believe, watertight doors that were left open. they were either malfunctioning or the crew just didn't shut them because it reduced like the amount of work to like unseal those doors

and you know, made their workflow easier. So you know, there were a few things that popped up, the fact that they, the company even said like, sale buys are fine, like we do it, it's something that we all do and it's fine. Like all these things popped up to put coast to cruises and hold their feet to the fire. So they ended up offering a payout of 11,000 euros

to anyone who was on board, plus obviously reimbursing them for the trip and any costs related to traveling for the trip, as long as you give up the right to sue. Yeah, and they settled with Italy itself for a one million euro fine, which kept them out of criminal lawsuits or criminal charges as a company. They just basically shoved a Skatino forward and said, here, everybody, have at them.

And again, rightfully so, but the company didn't take the kind of responsibility that it should have, like you were describing. And they got off easy. I mean, a couple million settlements. I mean, they really skinflineted the people who were affected by this. But let's not say they got off, Scott Free, as far as finances go. The salvage operation itself cost $1.2 billion. That's twice the amount it costs to build the ship in the first place. Plus they lost the half a billion dollar ship.

Right. So they lost your close to $2 billion. Exactly. So, so, so, so, Katina's little sail by cost that company two billion dollars. It cost the world 32 lives and some serious injuries as a result. And of course, the area around Zileo Island is probably never going to be the same again or won't be for a really long time. But there was an interesting little post script because somebody else lost out on this deal too. You may or may not feel bad for them, but the Calabrian Mafia, a few years ago, came out that the Italian police were recording their conversations and found out that the Calabrian Mafia had had a bunch of cocaine aboard the Custococordia.

And it's not clear if it was still there or if somebody swam aboard and got it, or what the deal was, but it was never like the salvage crew was never like we found the cocaine. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And we should also mention too, during that the salvage operation, remarkably only one

person died considering how dangerous the work was that you were doing these industrial divers. And one of them there was a Spanish diver who died February 1, 2014 trying to salvage the thing and help the environment out. Pretty nuts. Yeah. There was one other quote that Defalco had that wasn't quite as touted in the media, but I thought it was pretty BA, you ready?

That's a spicy meatball. Defelco said to Skitino on that famous phone call. Perhaps you saved yourself from the sea, but I'll make you pay. Oh yeah, that's a good one. He got them too. Wow, so that's it for the Custocincordia. And if you heard all this and you're like,

this is really interesting stuff, there's a lot of stuff out there for you to go check out. Totally, that Nova duck. Well, worth 50 minutes. Yeah, I mean, that alone is worth it. What was it? It's a... Shhh.

Sunk and ship rescue. It's a terrible title. It's really hard to get in there. Also, there's a really great vanity fair article called Another Night to Remember. I don't remember who wrote it, but they describe the people involved as ruggedly handsome,

receding hairline, just Vanity Fair kind of little interesting details to you, but it's really coherent and well written and really in-depth. Yeah, for sure. It's Vanity Fair, baby. It's right. That's what they do.

Yep, and since Chuck said it's Vanity Fair, baby, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this hello from a grateful doc. Because that's what Doc Twilling says. Doc Twilling sounds like a little house in the Prairie Kirkdo. Soda Pop will clear that right up. Hey guys, my name is Chris. I'm a physician from Michigan who's been listening for many years. So total popular clear that right up. Hey guys, my name is Chris, I'm a physician from Michigan who's been listening for many years. Initially I started listening to get through medical school in those long days and it was a relief to learn about something other than medicine.

I recently started listening to the selects on pain scales which inspired me to write in. As a physician, I'm constantly assessing pain severity to both help make diagnoses and monitor progress. As the patient's heal, most of the ideas you discuss are part of an average workday for me. However, you taught me some new ideas, including the concept that elderly patients make stress their pain differently, like they may use words like soreness instead of pain to describe their discomfort. I was intrigued by this and researched the idea further,

and I'm happy to say I now use this approach to better treat pain in my older adult patients. I love that Doc Chris here researched further, and he wouldn't just like Josh and Chuck said it. That's right. Let's barrel ahead. Yeah. That means Dr. Twilling is doing the right thing.

He's a sharp tech. That's right. You guys do a great job of taking complicated subjects and making it easier for everyone to understand. The explanations for medical shows you give, such as on addiction, diabetes, and high blood pressure, help me frame my own explanations to my patients. Communicating complicated topics in a way anyone can understand remains a challenge, but I feel I'm getting better every day through listening to how you both do it. Man, how about that?

Yeah, we're saving lives here Chuck, in a way. So, Doc Twilling, Chris Twilling, says, if you ever come to the Midwest, I'd love to come see you. So, put this on the books Doc Twilling, if we come through Michigan or anywhere else you can get to, you are on the books of Doc Twilling if we come through Michigan or anywhere else you can get to. You are on the guest list. Just send us an email from this very email that you sent and remind us a couple of weeks for the show.

Very nice. Good, good thinking, Chuck. If you want to be like Doc Twilling and get in touch with us and let us know how we're affecting lives, saving lives, that kind of thing, we love to hear that kind of stuff. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history.

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