Dad, I am alive… just. I think I was the last one off: How a British dancer clung to fire hose to stop herself falling overboard
- Rose Metcalf, 22, rescued from sinking ship by helicopter
- Dancer says the captain abandoned ship in the early stages of the evacuation
- ‘There were five us left on. We were getting ready to jump and swim for it’
- Survivors tell of panic as fathers ignore order that women and children should go first and passengers fight to get on boats
By Chris Hastings and Anthony Bond
Last updated at 10:57 AM on 15th January 2012
Members of a group of British dancers were among the last to leave the stricken Costa Concordia after they stayed behind to help others to safety.
Among them was Rose Metcalf, who let her family know about the dramatic events in a message she left on her father’s mobile phone at 3am. She said: ‘Hi, Dad. Just ringing to let you know that I am alive and safe and got airlifted out of the cruise ship.
‘I don’t know what will happen – I don’t know how many are dead. I am alive… just. I think I was the last one off.’
Survivor: Dancer Rose Metcalf, 22, was one of the last people to leave the Costa Concordia. She left a message on her father’s mobile phone at 3am letting him know that she was safe and well
Her story is one of dozens of incredible tales which have emerged from people desperate to flee the stricken ship.
Survivors have told how panic soon set in with fathers desperate to be with their families ignoring the order that women and children should go first. There was even fighting between some passengers who tried to get on lifeboats.
Ms Metcalf, who joined the dance group in October, was performing in the ship’s restaurant when the disaster struck at just after 9.30pm Italian time.
Dressed still in her dance clothes, water started entering the boat and the lights went out.
She said: ‘I dashed off to my cabin where I had dry clothes and put them on with a life-jacket.
Dramatic: Rose Metcalf said she and four colleagues used a water hose to tie themselves to a handrail before being rescued by an Italian air force helicopter
‘I went off to help calm the passengers and do a roll-call. People then started going into the boats.’
As the ship eventually began to list uncontrollably, she and four colleagues who stayed on board used a water hose to tie themselves to a handrail before being rescued by an Italian air force helicopter.
She said: ‘By the end, there were about five of us and we were the last to get off. We were getting ready to jump off and swim for it.
‘The boat was at 90 degrees. Then the helicopter turned up. Guys came down in harnesses and took us off.’
Ms Metcalf, 22, was then taken to an air force base in Tuscany. She telephoned her father Phil early yesterday morning to let him know she was safe, although after leaving the message it was more than six hours before they spoke to each other.
Mr Metcalf today revealed that at the time of the incident, his daughter was told by superiors to put on her cocktail dress and tell passengers the problem was only an electrical fault.
He told BBC Breakfast: ‘Luckily she ignored them, because being one of the last five people off the boat she would have been stranded there with a dress on and without a life-saving vest.’
Mr Metcalf also said the dancer revealed that the captain had abandoned the ship in the early stages of the evacuation, leaving his staff onboard.
‘Since the captain had left there was nobody, so everybody was left to their own devices hence some of the chaos, so obviously the crew took it upon themselves and decided in the absence of the captain to organise and try and help people.’
Her friend Amelia Leon, 22, told how she was watching a film with her boyfriend in their cabin when she felt the ship rock to one side.
She soon realised something was drastically wrong when it did not rock back and seconds later the lights went out.
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Ms Leon, who is related to a violinist who played as the Titanic went down – said she ran through corridors of screaming passengers to the deck and contemplated swimming to the shore in the pitch-black sea.
With her friend on the Costa Concordia, Rose said that she was among the last to get off the vessel
Rose was in one of the ship’s restaurants when it hit the rocks creating a gaping hole in the side
‘I looked out to sea and it was so dark, all I could make out was the coast of the island, about 400 metres away.
‘We were on the side which was tilting downwards and I remember asking myself: “Can I swim this if it comes to it? We were hearing about people who had jumped in the water but I couldn’t see anything because it was so dark.’
Thankfully, the couple managed to board a lifeboat which took them about 10 minutes to get to shore.
Once on safe ground, they realised how lucky they had been as they could see the lights of the Costa Concordia going down in the water.
Good work: Rose Metcalf helped to calm the passengers and do a roll-call
Another of the eight British dancers, Sarah Hudson, 22, from Warrington, escaped in a lifeboat, from where she phoned her family.
Ms Hudson said: ‘I rang my Dad and said the ship’s sinking but there is no problem and don’t panic. They thought I was joking because it was Friday the 13th.’
Earlier on the ship, she hadn’t immediately understood how bad the situation was. ‘I didn’t realise there was a problem until the water was coming about my feet. I thought that we had just hit a wave.
‘I didn’t think, until I was off the boat, that we could have died. Usually I am the first person to panic but because I had to calm the passengers, I convinced myself it was going to be all right.’
Her father, also called Phil, last night told how he and his wife Jennie had made contact with their daughter late on Friday.
Mr Hudson said: ‘She rang us saying she was on a lifeboat but she was amazingly calm. She had to discard her shoes before she jumped. She told us not to worry and that she was safe.’
He added: ‘She has lost all her possessions. Everything she had went down with the ship.’
Kirsty Cook, another British dancer, had to get down a rope ladder to get to safety on another boat.
Her mother Sandra said: ‘Thank God she got off safely. She said that she was lucky to be alive and very thankful.’
Also on the vessel was retired accountant Brian Page, 63, who had paid £860 for a seven-day cruise. He was enjoying a seven-course silver service dinner when disaster struck.
He said: ‘Soon everything was going everywhere – glasses, plates and cutlery. I was having to grip the table to stop it sliding away. The whole ship was rocking violently from side to side.’
Speaking of the panic on board, he said: ‘People were screaming. Women and children were not getting priority at all.’ He added: ‘I have lost everything including my passport. I only have the clothes I am wearing.’
Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles was traveling with her sister and parents.
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.
‘Have you seen ‘Titanic’? That’s exactly what it was,’ she said.
Scary: Survivors have told how people were screaming and women and children were not given priority
‘We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,’ her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61 said. ‘We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls.’
She choked up as she remembered the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship listed to the side.
‘He said, “Take my baby”, Georgia Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘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.’
Her daughter Valerie whispered: ‘I wonder where they are.’
The Ananias family was among the last passengers off the ship, left standing on the upended port side.
They were forced to exit from a still-attached lifeboat that became impossible to use once the ship began to tip over; so they climbed a ladder dropped too them off a deck and shimmied down a rope to a waiting rescue vessel.
‘We thought we were dying four times,’ Valerie said, recounting the most terrifying moments in their escape.
Two Italian journalists on the Mediterranean cruise said the accident happened during dinner hour.
‘We were dining when the lights went out, and suddenly we heard a bang and the dishes fell to the floor,’ said Luciano Castro.
‘It was like a scene from the Titanic,’ journalist Mara Parmegiani told Ansa.
Christopher Prentice, the British Ambassador to Italy, told Sky News at the scene: ‘We’re making good progress on ascertaining and confirming the whereabouts and welfare of the British citizens who we believe to have been involved.’
Asked if he could confirm the reports that nobody from Britain was injured or dead, he said: ‘We are going to be quite cautious about judgements and what we say in public until we really are absolutely certain of the facts.
‘We’re making good progress on matching names to lists, and confirming whereabouts. We have made contact with many of the passengers.’
The Ambassador said he had spoken to some of the Britons who had been evacuated, and they told him they left the ship in an ‘orderly fashion’, with ‘no tales of chaos’.
