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The dead are a Peruvian crew member and two French tourists whose bodies were recovered today from the sea by rescuers, continue even with the search effort around the hull of the vessel, of 114,500 tons and nearly 300 meters in length.
Besides the three who died, 40 passengers suffered injuries of varying degrees and two of them are in critical condition, one with a head injury and another in the spine.
Meanwhile, the commander of the "Costa Concordia", Francesco Schettino, has been arrested, according to the chief prosecutor of Siena (central Italy), Francesco Verusio, who questioned him for several hours.
Another crew member, whose identity was not disclosed, is also being investigated, according to Italian media.
On the boat traveled 177 Spanish, 107 Latin American (Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic and Uruguay) and Andorra, as well as nearly a thousand Italians, 569 Germans and 462 French, the three countries with the highest number of passengers ahead of Spain.
A group of nine Spanish in Majorca who was in the cruiser looking for today in Porto Santo Stefano (against Giglio) to one of their relatives, which had no news from the wreck.
Another young man from the same Spanish island, staying at a hotel in Rome, he had no news since last night the two friends who accompanied him.
The wreck occurred at 21.40 local time today (20.40 GMT) when the ship was heading from the port of Civitavecchia, 70 miles north of Rome to Savona (northwest Italy), stage of a Mediterranean cruise had stops in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca (Spain) and Palermo and Cagliari (Italy) and Marseille (France).
So far, no known cause of the incident, although considering the possibility that the captain followed the wrong path, as the ship should not be in the spot where he was hit against the rocks on both sides of the boat, which has been heeled 80 degrees and stranded on a sandbank of 30 meters deep.
As told by the survivors of the tragedy, when most of the passengers were at dinner we heard a heavy blow at the same time the power went out, after which the ship captain called for calm, assuring that it was an electrical fault.
"It was a nightmare, like the Titanic, thought to die," said Silvana Caddeo Italians, Ignazio Corda Deidda and Mirella, who pointed out that when the accident occurred were having dinner and there was the blow that caused the fall of bottles and glasses tables, after which he heard the emergency sirens.
"People screamed and children cried in the midst of total darkness," he added, while said they immediately realized that the thing was more serious because the ship began to heel over and saw many people throw the cold waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Several Latin American and Spanish tourists, staying at a hotel near Rome's Fiumicino airport waiting to be repatriated, expressed outrage at the treatment received by those responsible for the cruise and the "chaos" that was experienced during the evacuation .
"The crew had no idea how to evacuate the ship and the captain lied to us. He said until the last minute everything was checked and it was just an electrical fault," said Claudia Fehlandt Chile.
In this sense, some travelers have complained that relief efforts were slow, that before leaving the ship spent an hour and a half and that the captain knew the gravity of the situation and "did what I had."
Passengers were transferred to lifeboats Giglio, whose mayor made available to travelers, "all that was indoors," so they were housed for a few hours at home, sports and church of the small island, which remained open throughout the night.
Most of the survivors were taken to Rome and Savona to be housed temporarily in hotels and later repatriated to their countries, including Spain, to where the cruise company responsible for the charter poses a charter flight for tomorrow.
The Italian Ministry of Transport has opened a formal investigation into the incident, as well as the Office of Grosseto (central Italy).
