Some of the Americans who sailed aboard the ill-fated Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia are sharing tales of fear, panic, chaos and survival.
Most passengers were eating dinner when the ship struck a rock along the Tuscany coast, gouging a massive hole in the hull. The announcement to abandon ship came more than an hour later.
•Steve Ledtke, 58, of Fort Gratiot, Mich., remembers a horrifying "stampede, like a panic" after the announcement.
•Karen Camacho, 34, of Homestead, Fla., says she and her husband, Luis Hernandez, found themselves in a hallway jammed with people pushing to get to the lifeboats "and - I'm not going to lie - we were pushing, too."
•Mike Stoll, 29, of Brick, N.J., tells of gripping the deck rail of the listing ship and telling his wife, Addie King, that "God forbid something happens, we can make this swim to shore."
Steve and Kathy Ledtke flew home from Italy late Monday. Just three days earlier, they were enjoying a quiet dinner aboard the Costa Concordia when he says they "felt a big thud."
He says the boat seemed to start listing almost immediately. Tables began sliding and dinnerware was flying everywhere, he says.
A benign announcement was made, blaming an electrical problem.
"To many of us, it seemed like the boat was going to go down, regardless of what they said overhead," he recalls. "Once things started happening, all the staff was gone — they disappeared."
When the "abandon ship" call came, "it was almost like a stampede, like a panic" to get to lifeboats, Ledtke says. The lifeboat, designed for 150 people, probably had 250, he says.
"I thought we were just going to fall to the water there was so much weight. It jerked dramatically but then they lowered us to the water, and we headed to shore."
Camacho recounts a similar, chaotic dining experience. Tables sliding, dinnerware flying. Finally, she and her husband went to their room for coats and boots and ran to the lifeboats.
"No one was giving directions," she says. "Instead of letting passengers get into lifeboats, the crew were in first and saying not to let (passengers) in. My husband, he just climbed over a fence into a lifeboat after they closed it. Then they opened the gate for me.
"The lifeboat got stuck and they couldn't get it down. … I said to my husband, 'We are going to die here.' "
But the couple ran back through the dining room, and on the other side of the cruise ship jumped into a small boat that took them to shore.
"We were hugging each other to keep warm" she says. "Islanders were throwing blankets to people who had nothing. Everyone was grabbing them."
Finally a ferry took them to a bus that took them to a hotel in Rome. "I was crying," she says. "This is too much."
Stoll says he and King ignored crewmembers who told there was no need interrupt their dinner. He says they rushed back to their starboard-side suite and stuffed a bag with hooded sweatshirts, fleeces, "and, I don't know why, but I grabbed my keys" to the house.
Not wanting to cause panic, they concealed lifejackets beneath their coats and headed to a muster station on the outside deck, a place they were told during a ship training exercise that guests should go in case of emergency.
About a half hour later, the ship's list became more pronounced. The alarm sounded: seven short blasts and then an eighth sustained blast signaling an emergency.
"That's when I really started to get scared," Stoll says.
He and King paced the deck several times before finding room on a lifeboat — "it was every man for himself," King says.
"The crewmembers, they're not sailors. They're cooks, they're bartenders, they're dancers," Stoll says. "They're not trained like a Coast Guard member. They did the best they could, but they were just as terrified as us."
After a five- to 10-minute boat ride, the couple reached the shore of Giglio just before midnight.
Less than 48 hours later, they were home.
They each had their moments when they broke down from the physical and emotional toll of it all. King's was during a layover in London; Stoll's was when they hit the tarmac in Queens, N.Y.
"You got that feeling: It's finally over, I'm finally home," he says. "I feel like that now."