Two Dominican women who were on board the Costa Concordia holiday ship that ran aground off the Tuscan coast near the island of Giglio on Friday night are returning to Santo Domingo from Italy tomorrow evening when they are expected to give their account of the tragedy at sea. The disaster is being attributed to an error by ship captain Francesco Schettino who made an unauthorized maneuver.

The Dominican passengers are mother and daughter Raysa Otanez and Rayrub Torres Otanez. Some 4,229 people were on board the ship, with six reported dead as of Monday, 16 January and at least 16 still missing.

The two survivors told their relatives they were having dinner on board when they heard a horrendous noise. Otanez said that initially the organizers downplayed the incident, but that her daughter guided her to run to the higher part of the ship from the start and so were among the first to leave the ship. The crew is being blamed for mishandling the emergency, delaying the start of the evacuation until an hour after the accident.

The mother and daughter had been on holiday in Spain and boarded the ship in Barcelona. The cruise was the finale of their vacation.

A report in Spanish newspaper El Mundo quotes a survivor as saying that a Dominican employee from the ship's jewelry store had helped restore order on an overcrowded lifeboat.

Minister of Foreign Relations Carlos Morales said that although both women are suffering some muscle and neck pains they are otherwise well, but they yet did not have the names of the two other Dominicans on board.

www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/01/14/internacional/1326560270.html?cid=GNEW970103

More...