The trial against the captain of the "Costa Concordia" cruise ship, Francesco Schettino, began this Wednesday in Grosseto, Italy. The three Lanzarote residents who survived the cruise ship accident have had to relive the tragedy. "We are increasingly convinced that God was with us that night," says Teresa Curbelo, one of the survivors of the shipwreck.
As everyone will remember, the captain fled the ship, abandoning about 4,200 people to their fate. In this shipwreck that occurred in January 2012, 32 people died. The captain faces 20 years in prison. His lawyer tried to reduce the sentence to three years and five months in prison, but the Prosecutor's Office did not accept it.
The 4,200 people who were traveling on this cruise ship are represented in this trial, including the three Lanzarote residents, Teresa Curbelo, her husband, Benito González, and their son, Pablo, who was 8 years old at the time of the shipwreck. "Schettino has to go to jail," says Curbelo.
This same Thursday, Teresa Curbelo has received a message from the platform of those affected through Facebook. "They have just sent what comes out in the black box, the lack of control that there was. The engine room was flooded and the ship was drifting. The experts say that God has been with us, because the wind changed direction and carried the mass of the ship towards the rocks. It's that we were drifting and without control. It was seen on the radar and they didn't even know what to do," says this affected person to La Voz.
"Reliving this is not easy"
Teresa Curbelo still gets "goosebumps" when she remembers this shipwreck, because she is increasingly clear that it was a "miracle" that saved them. "Reliving this is not easy, because you always feel anger", she admits.
Both Teresa, her husband and her son have needed psychological assistance to overcome this trance. "The child has started talking about the subject now. Before he didn't say anything and now he's starting to tell us how he experienced it. I think it's good," she indicates. And it is that these vacations turned into a nightmare for this family from Lanzarote.
Two hours lost during the shipwreck
The events that are so hard for them to relive occurred on the night of January 13, 2012. The three Lanzarote residents were having dinner in the ship's restaurant when "suddenly it was noticed that it had crashed against something." The light went out and the ship began to list.
At that moment, the child, Pablo, eight years old, had gone to the bathroom, but "he never arrived because he was going up the ramp, the impact occurred and he fell backwards." This family, luckily, managed to find their son. But the most distressing moment had not yet passed.
When leaving the restaurant, her husband and son took one path and she took another. Teresa thought they were together, but when she looked back there was no trace of any of them. "He chose to go to the cabin and I to the emergency exit. We got lost for two hours and that was the worst of all, because I didn't know if they were alive or dead," said this Lanzarote resident, as soon as she arrived at terminal 1 of the Guacimeta airport, when she returned from Italy after the tragedy.
Luckily, the family finally met and was able to return home safe and sound, to Lanzarote.
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