Cook: Captain ordered dinner after wreck

GIGLIO, Italy, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- The Costa Concordia captain ordered dinner for himself and a woman after the ship struck rocks off Italy's coast, a ship's cook told a Philippine TV network.

Capt. Francesco Schettino ordered dinner for himself and a female Moldovan crew member, who was on board but not on duty, less than an hour after the $450 million, 114,500-ton cruise ship hit a reef a week ago, Rogelio Barista told GMA Network.

The 9:41 p.m. Jan. 13 crash tore a 160-foot gash in the hull, causing the 952-foot-long ship to list violently to starboard and then capsize, shortly after a late-seating dinner had begun.

Schettino ordered dinner around 10:30 p.m., Barista told the network.

"We wondered what was going on," he said.

"At that time, we really felt something was wrong. ... The stuff in the kitchen was falling off shelves and we realized how grave the situation was," he said.

The official death toll from the shipwreck is 11 and the number of missing is 21, including a retired American couple, the Italian Crisis Unit reported. Divers had not found more bodies as of early Friday.

Italian media devoted considerable attention to the female Moldovan crew member, Domnica Cemortan, a 25-year-old passenger rep who ship owner Costa Cruises confirmed late Thursday was an authorized passenger. Italian media reports speculated she may have been on the bridge because Schettino was trying to impress her.

Prosecutor Francesco Verusio asked police to track her down for her account of the events leading up to liner's striking an underwater reef just off the Italian island of Giglio, in the Tyrrhenian Sea off Tuscany, the British newspaper The Daily Mail reported.

Cemortan told Romanian daily newspaper Adevarul she was on the bridge with Schettino.

In a separate interview with a Moldovan TV, she praised Schettino's "extraordinary" handling of the disaster.

Costa Cruises and Italian authorities have been highly critical of Schettino, who is under house arrest and faces possible charges of manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship.

He is accused of deviating from his computer-programmed route to make a sail-by foghorn "salute" to a soon-to-retire crewman's family members, who were waiting in the Giglio port.

More than 4,200 people were on the Costa Concordia when it ran aground -- 3,216 passengers and about 1,000 crew members, the vast majority of whom made it off the ship safely.

Authorities hoped to stabilize the wrecked liner amid fears increasing wind gusts could make the water choppy and shift the ship farther into the sea and possibly break up.

The ship is carrying 500,000 gallons, or 2,300 tons, of semi-solid fuel in 17 separate tanks.

Wind gusts were forecast to increase from 12 mph Friday to 23 mph Saturday, AccuWeather reported. Temperatures amid bright sunshine would be in the mid to upper 50s Fahrenheit.