10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster vivid for survivors

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Ten years may have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off this Tuscan island. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain minute-to-minute vivid.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the hull first slammed into the rocks. The blackout after the ship's engine room flooded and generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and out fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of...