Friday the thirteenth certainly lived up to its reputation for a doomed cruise ship, but most of its passengers and crew fared better than the vessel itself.
Alan and Laurie Willits of Gorrie, were lucky indeed to have escaped unscathed from the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia that ran aground off the coast of Italy on Friday, Jan. 13.
The ship, owned by the American cruise line Carnival, struck rocks near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio. The ship carried over 4,000 people. As of press time, there were eleven reported deaths and several people still missing. Most of the passengers and crew escaped in lifeboats although there were some dramatic rescues involving helicopters.
Photos of the partly submerged cruise ship, said to be among the company's newer vessels and the 26th largest in the world, show a massive gash in the ship's side. An investigation into the cause of the disaster is underway.
The Willits' daughter Jory said her parents have been in touch with her, and as of press time, were in a hotel in Rome. She expects them home this weekend.
Jory said her parents go on a trip every winter. They left Jan. 10 and spent a couple of days in the Vatican before boarding the ship. They'd only been aboard about six hours when they felt the ship shudder. They were among the passengers watching a magic show when there were unusual noises and the ship began to list badly. Reports from other media quote Laurie Willits as saying, “Then the magician disappeared.” According to Jory, her parents immediately went to their cabin, put on life jackets and went to their lifeboat station.
“As far as I know, they were on the side of the ship where people were able to get on lifeboats easily,” Jory said. She really doesn't have a lot of information on what happened and likely won't until her parents return home, but said her parents told her things were tense but there wasn't a lot of panic where they were. “They got into their assigned lifeboat without much of a problem,” she said. Her father told her that once they were in the lifeboat area, about the only place they could go was into the boat. People kept pushing forward.
The Willits escaped with only the clothes on their back, Jory said. Although exhausted by their ordeal, they weren't injured.
Reports indicate the Willits were two of a dozen Canadians aboard the ship.