Report: Captain refused orders to return to cruise ship

Page last updated at 13:35 GMT, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 18:35 EST

VOA - An audio recording of an exchange between the Italian Coast Guard and the captain of a capsized Italian cruise ship reveals the captain refused orders to get back on the ship.

A leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, published a transcript Tuesday of the dramatic exchange.

In the conversation, Coast Guard Captain Gregory De Falco demands that the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, return by climbing a ladder on one side of the vessel and report how many people are still on board.

Related video of Italian rescuers

But Schettino responds he is not going anywhere, saying he is coordinating the rescue from a lifeboat. Captain De Falco warns Schettino he is "going to pay" for his actions.

The exchange took place during an evacuation process shortly after the Costa Concordia hit rocks and capsized off the coast of northern Italy late Friday. The vessel is now tilted on one side, partly submerged in the water.

The captain has denied he abandoned the ship.

Rescue operations continued on Tuesday to find possible survivors aboard the ship. At least 11 people are known dead because of the wreck, including five bodies found Tuesday. At least 24 people remain missing.

Captain Schettino is in police custody. He faces charges of manslaughter for allegedly abandoning the ship before all passengers were rescued.

The ship's owners, Costa Crociere cruise lines, are blaming the accident on human error by the captain.

On Tuesday, a Dutch company that specializes in salvage operations said it will take weeks to remove the fuel from the Costa Concordia. The company, Smit, says it plans to conduct a survey of the ship on Tuesday before the extraction process begins.

"It is a race against time to empty the fuel tanks on the ship after they finish the inspections to find, to give precedence to finding, any other passengers or crew members," said World Wildlife Federation Italy Spokesman Gaetano Benedetto.

The rough seas near where the Costa Concordia remains aground have raised concerns of a possible fuel spill. None of the nearly 2 million liters of fuel have leaked out, but anti-spill booms have been placed around the wreck.

"If the fuel starts to come out, it depends how much comes out, but we have learned from experience that even a little bit of fuel coming out is enormously difficult to control if it gets out of the containment booms that are put around the ship when there are these types of operations," said Benedetto.

A spokesman for Costa Crociere cruise lines said the captain was steering on an "unauthorized, unapproved" course before the ship got stuck. He said the captain steered too close to shore and made decisions during the emergency that did not follow company procedures, which are based on international standards.

Officials say that when the ship hit the rocks, passengers were ordered to put on life jackets and to board life rafts. However, passengers say the ship tilted so sharply and quickly that many lifeboats could not be lowered into the water.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.