Two South Korean honeymooners and an Italian crewman were rescued Sunday from a cruise ship wreck on an Italian island as emergency services searched frantically for 17 people missing.
Rescuers said the search in the half-submerged ship was highly dangerous because the decks were at almost a 90-degree angle and there was a risk that the ship could slip off the rocks it had struck and sink altogether. “We’ve rescued him!” a coast guard official said of the man, an Italian officer responsible for passenger security on the vessel, after rescuers spent hours trying to reach him after hearing his voice echoing in the monster ship.
The official said the rescued man had suffered a broken leg.
Fire crew chief Cosimo Pulito said: “He was in the tea room. He shouted with joy when we got to him. He just thanked us.”
But Pulito said rescuers had only searched a quarter of the ship so far, including most of the area above water and some underwater parts.
“It’s unlikely there are any air pockets. Our divers have checked all of the outside of the ship and they believe there aren’t,” he said. “We’ve started with where the highest probability is of finding people alive. We haven’t gone into the machine room yet,” he added.
“We will continue searching until we’ve done the whole ship.”
The Costa Concordia hit submerged rocks just off the island of Giglio late on Friday, with more than 4,200 people onboard.
