By NBC, msnbc.com staff and news services
NBC's Claudio Lavanga reports.
PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy -- Survivors from a luxury cruise ship that ran aground and tipped over in shallow waters off the coast of Tuscany on Saturday recounted scenes of chaos,?with frightened passengers crawling along upended hallways and some leaping into the sea?trying to reach safety.
"Have you seen 'Titanic?' That's exactly what it was," said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean. They all bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along nearly vertical hallways and stairwells, trying to reach rescue boats.
Three bodies were recovered from the sea after the Costa Concordia ran aground off the tiny island of Giglio near the coast of Tuscany late Friday, tearing a 160-foot gash in its hull and sending in a rush of water.?Italian news agency ANSA said the dead were two French passengers and a Peruvian crewman.
Up to?70 people were still unaccounted for Saturday among the more than 4,300 passengers and crew who were on board, the Italian coast guard said.
Cmmdr. Cosimo Nicastro, spokesman for the Italian coast guard, told Sky TG24 TV there were no firm indications that anyone was trapped inside the ship. But he noted rescuers carried out an extensive search of the waters near the ship for hours and "we would have seen bodies."
He said it's possible those unaccounted for "might be is in the belly of the ship."
The U.S. Embassy in Rome estimated 100 Americans may have been on board. There were no reports of serious injuries to Americans,?based on information provided by local officials.
By?Saturday morning, the ship was lying virtually flat off Giglio's coast, its starboard side submerged in the water and the huge gash showing clearly on its upturned hull.
Nicastro said divers will continue to search for survivors for the next two or three days. It's a dangerous operation because the ship could sink another?230 feet, he said.
Passengers who escaped complained the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many of them to be released.
Passengers: 'Unorganized' crew, no evacuation drills
Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier, called the entire trip "unorganized" from the start.
"It was so unorganized. Our evacuation drill was [not]?scheduled [until] 5 p.m." said. "We had joked, 'What if something had happened today?'"
"We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,"?said Ananias' ?mother, Georgia Ananias, 61. "We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls."
She choked up as she recounted the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship lurched to the side and the family found themselves standing on a wall. "He said 'take my baby,'" Georgia Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand as she teared up. "I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn't want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn't hold her.
"I thought that was the end and I thought they should be with their baby," she said.
Stringer/ Reuters
Passengers arrive at Porto Santo Stefano after a cruise ship ran aground
Passenger Maria Parmegiano Alfonsi told Sky Italia television that they were "sitting down to dinner and we heard this big bang."
"I think it hit some rocks. There was a lot of panic, the tables overturned, glasses were flying all over the place and we ran for the decks where we put on our lifevests," she said.
"We had a blackout and everybody was just screaming. All the passengers were running up and down and then we went to our cabins to get to know what is going on," said another passenger, who did not give his name.
"They said we should stay calm, it is nothing, it's just some electrical problem or just some blackout thing," the man added.
Helicopters plucked to safety some people who were trapped on the ship, some survivors were rescued by boats in the area, and witnesses said some people jumped from the ship into the dark, cold sea.
Passengers Alan and Laurie Willits from Wingham, Ontario, celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, said they were watching the magic show in the ship's main theater when they felt an inital lurch, as if from a severe steering maneuver, followed a few seconds later by a "shudder" that tipped trash cans over. The subsequent listing of the ship made the theater curtains seem like they were standing on their side.
"And then the magician disappeared," Laurie Willits said, and panicked audience members fled for their cabins as well.
Once at their life boat station, crew members directed passengers to go upstairs from the fourth floor deck; Alan Willits said he refused.
"I said 'No, this isn't right.' And I came out and I argued, 'When you get this boat stabilized, I'll go up to the fifth floor then," he said. Eventually, his lifeboat was lowered down.
But things didn't improve for passengers once they were on safe ground.
"No one counted us, neither in the lifeboats nor on land," said Ophelie Gondelle, 28, a French military officer from Marseille. She said there had been no evacuation drill since she boarded in Marseille, France on Jan. 8.
The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on Giglio, a popular vacation isle about 18 miles off Italy's central west coast.
Passengers sat dazed in a middle school opened for them, wrapped in wool or aluminum blankets, with some wearing their life preservers and their shoeless feet covered with aluminum foil. Civil protection crews served them warm tea and bread, but confusion reigned supreme as passengers tried desperately to find the right bus to begin their journey home.
Tanja Berto, from Ebenfurth, Austria, was shuttled from one line to another with her mother and 2-year-old son Bruno, trying to figure out how to get back to Savona, where they began their cruise a week ago.
"It's his birthday today," she said of her son, rolling her eyes as she held Bruno and tended to her mother, who had grown faint and was lying on the ground. "Happy birthday, Bruno."
The island's mayor, Sergio Ortelli, issued an appeal for islanders ? "anyone with a roof" ? to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia, en route to its first port of call, Savona, in northwestern Italy.
Paolillo, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" ? it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio ? "ripping a gash 50 meters (160 feet) across" in the side of the ship, and started taking on water.
The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier. But after the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said, so authorities dispatched helicopters.
Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.
The Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters, ANSA reported. In 2008, when strong winds buffeted Palermo, the cruise ship banged against the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered damage but no one was injured, ANSA said.
NBC News, The Associated Press, Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this story.
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