Five More Bodies Recovered From Capsized Italian Cruise Ship

Divers searching a capsized cruise ship off the coast of Italy discovered five more bodies Tuesday, raising the death toll to 11. Before the bodies were discovered, 29 people were missing, including two Americans.

Dean and Georgia Ananias, and two of their daughters survived the cruise ship wreck. But after arriving back in the Southland, the family from Downey was mad.

“I mean they couldn’t even run their boats. That’s one of the reasons we had to get off the boat because they didn’t know how to run it,” said Dean Ananias.

The Ananias family was one of the last groups of more than 4,200 people on board the Costa Concordia to escape the capsized ship. They say it was chaos and crew members were no help. And once they made it to a life boat, no one knew how to operate it.

“This was a 5 1/2-hour grueling experience and we faced death four times,” said Georgia Ananias.

Meantime the man being blamed for the ship wreck, Capt. Francesco Schettino was mobbed as he arrived Tuesday for a court hearing where Italian prosecutors accused him of manslaughter, causing a ship wreck and abandoning ship, after they say he deliberately steered the ship off course and into a reef.

It turns out, once rescuers learned the captain had left the ship following Friday nights mishap, in a heated phone call he was ordered to go back.

This is text from a Port Authority audio recording:

“Look Schettino, you may have saved yourself from the sea, but I will put you through a lot of trouble. It will be very bad for you. Get back on board.”

“Officer please,” Schettino said. The officer shouts back. “There are no pleases, get back on board.”

Schettino never returned to the ship.

While while formal charges against him are pending, he has been placed under house arrest.

But it’s hardly any comfort for the Ananias family. Although they say they’ve taken about 75 cruises, they’ve made a pact not to take another cruise until they see cruise lines improve safety standards.

“Changes in the way cruise lines run and safety procedures,” said Georgia Ananias. And her husband Dean added. “Safety procedures and training of crews, absolutely. Training of crews, they were totally incompetent.”