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More than 20 are still missing but the search for survivors has been halted.

Now, questions are being asked about the potential environmental impact.

The Costa Concordia is a large ship equipped with tanks full of fuel. It is aground off an island in a sea fringed with natural protected areas. Whether the vessel can be saved is uncertain.

Host Marco Werman talks with Mike Lacey of the International Salvage Union in London.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Rescuers in Italy today suspended efforts to find survivors of the Costa Concordia shipwreck. The half-sunk cruise liner shifted in the water making it too dangerous for divers to continue their search. Eleven deaths are confirmed and more than 20 people remain missing. As time passes, work at the site will inevitably focus more on the wreck itself. Salvage teams have two goals — empty the ship’s fuel tanks before they spill; and then decide whether the damaged liner can be saved. Mike Lacey is Secretary. He says the wreck is in a precarious position.

Mike Lacey: There is deep water off just where the ship is laying, one of the risks has to be if she slips away from where she is then she will go into the deeper water, and perhaps even sink. The prime consideration is always safety.

Werman: Now, speaking of safety, the contract to off load the fuel on the Costa Concordia has just been awarded. Can the salvage operation happen at the same time that the fuel is getting taken off the ship?

Lacey: That will normally depend upon the owners and the Italian authorities who will have to decide whether they are prepared to allow salvage work, traditional salvage work in order to save the ship itself, to be carried out at the same time as the fuel removal. It may be that they will allow for preparatory work to take place, but they may not be prepared to allow any full scale salvage operations to take place until all the fuel has been removed.

Werman: There are still people missing from this accident. Will the salvage workers eventually find them and is that a necessary outcome here?

Lacey: Well, that is a very sad scenario and unfortunately, it does happen in shipping casualties. And obviously, they will show the utmost respect to any bodies they find during the course of the salvage operations. If they are able, for example, to bring the ship into an upright position, it will enable a more detailed search to be carried out, and certainly if they are able to pump out the ship it will enable a detailed search to be carried out. It may be that some of these people who have sadly lost their lives in this situation are not actually inside the ship. They may have got into the water and been swept away. Who knows.

Werman: Do you think the Costa Concordia can be saved?

Lacey: If there is a possibility then for sure the salvers will try to achieve that. If she is too far gone, if she is too badly damaged then it may well be that the cost of repairing the ship will be out of all proportion to her value, and in that case she will become a constructive total loss and she will almost certainly be cut up where she lays.

Werman: Have you ever seen a ship that was pretty badly damaged and you thought no, it’s never gonna be save, but in fact, it was salvaged?

Lacey: Yes, I mean that does happen. They do go aground, they have collisions, they have structural failures, they have fires. This is just part of the shipping scene. And ships do get repaired.

Werman: And what’s your hunch about the Costa Concordia?

Lacey: I personally think that in the situation in which the vessel is at the present time that she will probably be ended up being scrapped. She will probably have to be cut up where she is.

Werman: Mike Lacey, General Secretary of the International Salvage Union, thank you for your time.

Lacey: No problem, thank you.

Werman: For more of our in depth coverage of the Costa Concordia accident, including that startling recording made by Italy’s Coast Guard of a conversation with the ship’s captain, just go to theworld.org.

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Rescuers found five more bodies inside the half-submerged Costa Concordia.

Also, the captain of the shipwrecked cruise liner appeared at a hearing before a judge.

Franceso Schettino is facing multiple charges, including manslaughter and abandoning the ship before all its passengers were evacuated.

The judge placed the captain under house arrest.

Schettino’s lawyer says his client denies abandoning the ship, but he may find it hard to prove.

Italy’s Coast Guard released an audio recording of one of its commanders on shore speaking on the phone with Captain Schettino in the middle of the crisis.

Authorities investigate Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia’s black box to determine what caused Friday’s deadly maritime disaster.

Lauren Moore (Family photo)

Costa Cruises boss Pier Luigi Foschi accused Captain Francesco Schettino of sailing too close to a nearby island in order to show the ship to locals.

The captain says the rocks the ship hit were not on his chart.

Six people were killed and 16 are still missing after the Costa Concordia’s hull was torn open on Friday.

Lauren Moore of Bowling Green, Kentucky, was one of those on board. She talks with host Marco Werman about the trip of a lifetime that started to go wrong after just eight hours.

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Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman, this is The World. The cruise ship industry is facing a lot of questions about its safety today. The image of that crippled half submerged cruise liner off the coast of Italy will not be easily forgotten. The Costa Concordia ran into rocks on Friday night, near the Italian island of Giglio. The giant ship eventually came to rest on its side, right next to the island. Six people are known to have died. 16 others are still missing. In a few minutes we’re going to speak to an expert on cruise ship safety. First though we turn to Lauren Moore. She was one of the 4200 people on the Costa Concordia on Friday night. She boarded with a group of friends that afternoon. Nearly eight hours later Lauren was literally on a sinking ship. She’s now back home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Lauren, tell us where you were when you realized something was amiss on the ship.

Lauren Moore: We were actually seated at dinner when we hit the rock. We heard a loud noise and everything started moving. Glasses and dishes and utensils started hitting the floor and the entire ship started leaning to one side. Everyone started getting up and running away. The lights started flickering and that’s when we realized something was bad.

Werman: What did that sound sound like? I mean what did you hear?

Moore: Someone actually made the comment like maybe that’s an engine going down. Because we had no idea what it was like. And it was only when the boat started leaning very badly that we realized that that could not be an engine.

Werman: Now, I heard an account where by the listing of the boat didn’t happen for nearly an hour after that sound you described. Was it immediate this tipping of the boat?

Moore: It did tip immediately. It came back upright and then actually went the opposite way that it initially started. So it did quite a bit of leaning both ways.

Werman: And so describe the scene after the lights started flickering and debris started flying, did people try and get out of this dining area?

Moore: Oh well, yeah, people started running immediately, and up the stairs out, no one, everyone just forgot about their dinner and ran. And there was mess all over the floor, broken dishes, water, wine, food everywhere, and everyone was just running like crazy, holding hands, and getting out of there. I actually got separated from half of my group members, and only… I was with one other person instead of all five of us. And me and one other person managed to get back to our room. I had to change out of my diner wear because I was wearing a fancy dress and heels. But, if I had to get off this boat, there’s no way I can get into a lifeboat in this. So I managed to change. We got a cellphone, a credit card, and our life vests. And we managed to get to the lifeboats.

Werman: So you were thinking clearly enough to kind of make all these plans ahead of time in the event that you needed to get off?

Moore: I was. I don’t know where that came from. I really don’t but we were really thinking, OK, if we get on a lifeboat and get through this, then what’s next? We have to get somewhere because the ship I guess we already had decided was going down.

Werman: How close to shore were you at this point? Were you able to see the shore?

Moore: Honestly, I couldn’t see anything at that point. I mean it was pitch black outside. There were very little lights on in the boat. And from where we were standing on the deck we could not see anything. I was on the side of the boat that was up so I was looking at sky and not water. And I had no idea if we were in the middle of the ocean, were we close to the shore. I had no idea where we were at.

Werman: Lauren I assume many others on the boat had the same survival instinct as you. Was everybody getting out on deck and trying to get into the lifeboats at this point?

Moore: That night, when we made it to the deck where the lifeboats were, I’ve never seen such a chaotic life threatening scene. People almost turned into animals trying to save themselves and their families. People were fighting to get on boats. And when the boats were becoming overcrowded, the crews were having trouble trying to keep passengers from getting on the boats. And the passengers that were already on the lifeboats were screaming at crew members and at other passengers to stay away, because they were fearful that the pulleys would break or the boats would break. It was right out as the Titanic.

Werman: I’m just curious to know too was there any warning after you heard this loud sound like an engine and the ship gashed itself, was there any warning signal, a siren of some sort?

Moore: No, there wasn’t. After the initial impact they came over the loud speaker several times and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the situation is under control. There’s an electrical problem. It’s a generator. We’re working on the situation. Please stay calm.” That announcement came over several times. It wasn’t until an hour after we had made it to the lifeboats that they finally sounded the alarm to evacuate ship. And unless you knew what that alarm meant you would not know, because we hadn’t had an emergency drill yet.

Werman: Lauren, how are the rest of your friends that you went on this trip with?

Moore: They are tired and very happy to be home. We had a lot of people to thank. There were a lot of people back here in the States that made a lot of calls on our behalf and helped us get back home. And crazy as it sounds, there were a lot of random people in Italy that helped us out. We had a driver there that we had used earlier, the day before, on Thursday, to drive us around. And we called him and he came and picked us up, and drove us around for free, because we had no cash on us whatsoever. And there was a hotel that gave us free breakfast. And just people like that who made such a terrible situation just easier on us when we had nothing to offer.

Werman: Lauren, it occurs to me that it must be very weird to be back home in Kentucky, on a Monday, when not even three days ago you found yourself as one of many people at the center of an unfolding disaster.

Moore: It is very surreal. I think I should be in Barcelona today according to my schedule. Everyone who was on that ship lost everything. I mean all their clothes, all of their belongings were all left on that ship. No one hardly got out with anything. And it’s just a surreal experience to fly home and fly home with absolutely nothing.

Werman: It must be somewhat humbling.

Moore: It is. It really is.

Werman: Have you ever traveled on a cruise ship before and would you do it again?

Moore: This was my first cruise and it will probably be my last cruise for sure. [laughs]

Werman: Lauren Moore from Bowling Green, Kentucky who got home late last night after being a passenger on the stricken cruise ship, the Costa Concordia. Lauren, very good to speak with you. Thanks a lot.

Moore: Thank you so much.

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Ship's navigational bridge (Photo: prc1333/Flickr)

Modern Cruise ships are fitted with some of the best navigational technology in the world. So, how can things go so wrong? Anchor Marco Werman asks cruise industry analyst, Julian Bray.

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Marco Werman: Julian Bray is a writer, broadcaster, and a cruise industry analyst. He joins us from Cambridge in England. How is it possible that an accident like this in this day in age, how can they just not know where the rocks, and reefs, and other hazards are?

Julian Bray: Well, that is the big question. This is a 21st century cruise liner. It’s a new ship. It has state-of-the-art navigational equipment on. It’s got zero positioning, it’s go satellites, you name it, they can actually plot this ship to within three inches. Now, why was it right off its plotted course? Because apparently the captain wanted to actually showboat, if you like. He wanted to take his near an island where a retired officer lived, and so he could actually hoot the horn three times and say look, I have a wonderful ship for you. They did it once before apparently, but that time it was actually authorized by the company, and they said fine, you can do that. But this time he did it off his own back, according to the company. And I have to say there will be an investigation, so all these allegations have to be put to the captain and the first officer.

Werman: Are there any mechanisms on a cruise liner that prevent a captain actually going into too shallow water?

Bray: No, because the captain, the master as he’s known, the master is the authority on board for everything. You look to the master, the master has a master’s ticket and so therefore, he’s expected to be highly professional and his first responsibility is to look after his passengers, then look after the ship. And so that is exactly what he has to do. There is no leeway on this, it’s a well-known industry standard, this is what you do. They layout the procedure and it’s very, very detailed. Why on earth he decided to do this, if he did decide to do it, he claims that he was well within bounds and there was no rocks charted, but the point is he did end up on a ridge and quite frankly, he shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Werman: You said that the Costa Concordia is a 21st century ship. Let’s just talk about the ship design for a moment, because if you look at modern cruise ships they look tall, they look top heavy. Are they safe?

Bray: Well, they are safe because they’re basically, all the weight is in the base of this particular structure, and there’s no weight on the top because the upper structure is all lightweight aluminum. All the heavy weight stuff is way down below, so it is very low center of gravity. So it can sway one way or the other, but it will still regain its center of gravity. That’s what they’re designed to do. They do have flat bottoms these ships, but they also have a couple of fins that go out either side that are stabilizers, and that make sure that you know, that they always are level in the water. Now, if I’m on a cruise ship and it’s more than five degrees list, then I am very angry, I am a very upset passenger. Now, he actually let it go to 20 degrees list initially, so frankly, everybody will be up in arms, things will be sliding everywhere, and there’ll be some injuries as well. So surely at that stage he should’ve sounded the emergency alarm basically, it’s one below abandon ship, this is emergency stations, which is seven short blasts on the whistle and one long blast. And that would’ve actually put everything in train. All the staff would then go to their master stations, go to their various…They would then go into their routine to get everybody off of the ship. For some reason he doesn’t seem to have done this. I don’t have all the detail here, no doubt the inquiry will find it out.

Werman: Julian Bray, a cruise industry analyst, thank you very much for your time.

Bray: Thank you.

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The appointment of Monti, an ex-EU competition commissioner, was announced by Italy’s president on Sunday.

Monti said he wanted to build “a future of dignity and hope” for Italy’s children.

Anchor Marco Werman talks with Italian journalist Gianni Riotta about Monti’s background.

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Marco Werman: Italy’s Prime Minister designate is busy forming a cabinet. Mario Monti was officially picked over the weekend to replace Silvio Berlusconi at the Italian helm. Monti doesn’t have a lot of time. Financial markets are still looking for signs that Italy’s new government can get a handle on the country’s massive public debt. Monti seems well-qualified for the job. He’s a 68-year-old economist who studied at Yale. He also served as Europe’s Competition Commissioner, famously tangling with Microsoft over anti-trust issues. To find out more about Italy’s man of the moment we turn to Gianni Riotta, he’s editor-in-chief and of the business daily, II Sole 24 Ore, in Rome. Gianni, what part of Monti’s background is most important do you think for Italy right now?

Gianni Riotta: You know, Mario Monti’s resume is impressive and you just gave us a few items, but what really Monti needs now is something that is completely untested for, it is to have like a political neck, because the politicians, unfortunately, and the markets will not be impressed by his resume. They will want him to form a government in a matter of hours and then to implement the reforms that Berlusconi wasn’t able to implement in almost 20 years. And that’s not easy. I mean it’s not for his golden resume that Monti will win, but if he reveals himself a great politician, and we hope so.

Werman: So we don’t know whether he has the political knack yet or not, that’ll take so me time.

Riotta: I hope, yes, and I think when you mention tangling with Bill Gates as commissioner, and I remember also he making quite a fight with Jack Welch of General Electric and there was another 800 lb. gorilla. So Mario Monti is a very gutsy man, but then you know, a political manager is also a power broker and that’s where we have to support him. And the public opinion is to support him.

Werman: He’s sometimes referred to as an academic kind of a sober technocrat. That’s a stark contrast to the boisterous Berlusconi. How do Italians feel about that?

Riotta: You know, I think Italians, were fed up with the Berlusconi style, but what I want your listeners to remember is that it wasn’t the bizarre lifestyle of Mr. Berlusconi that broke him down, it was the economy. And the relentless campaign against Berlusconi’s lifestyle, he was sound on immoral ground, but he was totally ineffective on political ground. Mario Monti is exactly the opposite. He goes to mass. He has been married with his college sweetheart. He’s like you know, a straight arrow, completely a straight arrow. But again, this is not about who’s the best boy in class. This is who is going to tame the market.

Werman: So I guess it’s hard to tell whether Monti will be able to do that or not, but you make a point there, Gianni, I’m wondering whether Monti will be able to change the culture of Italy after so many years of Berlusconi.

Riotta: But you see we have two main problems: one is the huge debt. We have like 1,900 euro billion of debt, but what’s really bad about Italy is the country hasn’t grown in almost 15 years. And the country is very vital and filled up with talent. And I’m positive that we can rescue it.

Werman: Now, Mario Monti studied in the United States. So did Lucas Papademos, who is in charge of the interim coalition in Greece right now. He taught in the US. I’m just wondering if you think a US academic background in economics is kind of [unknown 3:36] right now if you want credibility?

Riotta: You know, an Ivy League background, and I speak as a graduate of Columbia and as a professor now at Princeton University, that doesn’t vouch that you are a great guy. There are like dictators in the third world that boast prestigious university degrees, but for sure we are coming to a global world. I mean I don’t think that Mario Monti studied at Yale or been in all kinds of think tanks in United States will do the work. What he has to do is to fix the nuts and bolts of the Italian economy. He can do it, but that’s going to be a massive job.

Werman: Gianni Riotta, editor in chief of the business daily, II Sole 24 Ore, in Rome. Thanks so much for speaking with us.

Riotta: Thank you, bye.

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Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi calls on the European Central Bank to support the euro.

The appointment of Monti, an ex-EU competition commissioner, was announced by Italy’s president on Sunday.

Monti said he wanted to build “a future of dignity and hope” for Italy’s children.

Global markets have responded cautiously to the creation of the emergency government.

In what was seen as the first test of Monti’s leadership, Italy sold 3 billion euros ($4.2 billion) of new five-year bonds on Monday.

However, it had to pay more to borrow the money, a rate of 6.29 percent, indicating continuing unease in the markets.

Berlusconi was forced to resign when the yield on Italian bonds rose to more than 7 percent last week, the rate at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were obliged to seek bailouts from the EU.

Canadian cartoonist Gary Clement on Italy’s latest austerity measure.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Italy’s financial troubles got worse today. Less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised to resign, the bond market signaled their displeasure. The interest rate on Italian government bonds rose to record highs. Investors seemed not to like the uncertainty about when Berlusconi will step down. Alexander Stille is a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. He’s the author of the 2006 book, The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi. Alexander Stille, the title of that book shows just how long Berlusconi has been arranging his tenure as the head of Italy. You wrote that in 2006. He says he will resign, but he’s proven to be pretty slippery. Is there some way he might end up not resigning or you think this is for real?

Alexander Stille: Well, I think he’ll resign in the short term. Whether he actually removes himself from the political scene in a more lasting way is very much of an open question. The predictions of Berlusconi’s death have been premature many times, and he is a person of enormous energy and enormous conviction in himself, and unbelievable power. Even if he is no longer prime minister he will still be the most powerful person in the country by a ratio of about 100 to 1 of anybody who’s going to come afterwards because with his enormous personal fortune and the media access that he controls.

Werman: Right, talk about that a bit. I mean Berlusconi told Italian newspaper, La Stampa, that he won’t run for office in future elections. Let’s suppose he does mean it. He resigns, even after leaving office, being the richest man in Italy, how will he use that power?

Stille: Well, the party that he founded and controls would presumably be one of the parties competing in the election. The person he has designated as his successor is a young lawyer who owes his entire career and fortune to Berlusconi. It’s not like a normal political party where you have competing leaders who were vying for control. You have some of that, but they all work for Berlusconi essentially, so that even if he’s not the guy on the ticket he will be the power in that party. That party right now because of the current government’s poor record appears likely to lose if polls taken now whenever elections are actually held. But he will still, Berlusconi will still have an enormous veto power in society. He can create a lot of noise very quickly with the media machine that he has, and so…

Werman: Right, tell us more about that. I mean media is part of the reason Berlusconi became such a powerful figure in Italy. Tell us what he has under his control.

Stille: Well, he has the three largest private TV networks, so imagine that you ABC, NBC and CBS all owned by the same person. Imagine that that person was rather like Rupert Murdoch and used those networks the way Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch used Fox News. Imagine if that person also controlled the other three national networks, which were the state TV networks; and also had the biggest publishing house, the biggest magazine publishing empire, you know, fidelity mutual funds, and all sorts of other business interests and you begin to get an idea of how much power this person has.

Werman: Doesn’t Italy have any antitrust laws that could’ve controlled Berlusconi for the last 20 years?

Stille: They’re hopelessly weak. And Italians were very slow to wake up to this problem of conflict of interest. I remember as an American observer to this scene, I had endless conversations with people in the early to mid-’90s about this and stress how important was, and I tried to explain that it wasn’t just an ethical principle. He would actually make governing impossible, and that’s in fact what has happened.

Werman: You know, Berlusconi’s personal behavior is a stark counterpoint to Italy’s fabled history and storied culture that you reference in the title of your book. I’m wondering if Berlusconi showed the world though a little known tawdry side of Italy that was always there and will always be there, or he Berlusconi now been around so long that he’s actually eclipsed Italy’s storied paths that the country is now permanently stained with his not terribly pleasant reputation?

Stille: Well, Berlusconi took things that were already existing in Italy. We mentioned before, the lack of antitrust laws, the lack of conflict of interest rules, there’s a long history of corruption before Berlusconi, government interference in the economy…all these things exists. He took them to a whole new level and turned them almost into a philosophy of life that it was somehow okay to grab what you could, but regardless of the rules if you could make it stick and beat the wrap.

Werman: Alexander Stille of the Columbia School of Journalism. His book is The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi. Alexander Stille, thanks very much indeed.

Stille: Thank you for having me.

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So actors and performers have taken over the venue and are holding open mic poetry readings, skits and musical performances to save the theater from the chopping block.

Megan Williams reports from Rome.

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His announcement follows a vote in parliament on the budget in which he appeared to lose his majority.

Both allies and opponents have been urging Mr Berlusconi to step down as Italy’s debt crisis grows.

Borrowing rates have shot up in recent days, raising concerns over whether Italy can service its debts.

While Italy’s deficit is relatively low, investors are concerned that the combination of Italy’s low growth rate and $2.6 trillion debt could make it the next country to fall in the eurozone debt crisis.

Live: Italy Crisis