Miami based Carnival Cruise (CCL) isn’t wasting any time before running its well-known bear commercial (the one with the screaming bears attacking the in couple in their car) in the wake of the tragic sinking of the Concordia off the cost of Isola del Giglio, Italy on Friday the 13th.
As I watched the news this morning I was somewhat taken aback when the commercial aired seconds after hearing first hand accounts from some of the terrified passengers who spoke of having to fend for themselves since neither the crew nor the captain helped them in any way.
Here's the commercial:
Over 4,000 people evacuated and at this time there are five confirmed deaths and 17 people still missing. Captain Schettino faces manslaughter charges while the giant Carnival Corporation has yet to address allegations of its delayed evacuation response.
The incident is the most dramatic cruise ship accident since the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912 killing 1,517 people. Rose Metcalf, a 22 year-old British dancer who worked on the ship as a performer told her father it “felt like the sinking of the Titanic.”
Fabio Costa, a cruise-ship shop worker, told the BBC: “We just saw a huge rock, that was probably where the ship hit, and people were having huge trouble trying to get on the lifeboats. So at that point we didn’t know what to do, so it took hours for people to get off the ship. It was easier for people to jump into the sea because we were on the same level as that water. So some people pretty much just decided to swim as they were not able to get on the lifeboats.”
Carnival Corporation came under fire when The New York Times reported on February 1, 2011 that over a five year period the company has paid total corporate taxes equal to only 1.1 percent of its cumulative $11.3 billion in profits thanks to an obscure tax loophole.
Carnival (CCL) owns 100 ships and has 10 more on order. Its brands include Carnival, Holland America Line, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Ibero Cruises, P&O Cruises, Cagliari and Palermo.
Carnival was created by Meshulam Riklis and Ted Arison. In 1990 Arison denounced his U.S. citizenship and returned to Israel with billions of dollars he took from tax paying U.S. passengers in order to avoid paying estate and inheritance taxes. Riklis famously sold his stake in Carnival to Arison for $1.
2012 Copyright Kirby Sommers
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Order your copy of 'Carnival Cruise: The Definitive History of the Company and the men behind the doomed Costa Concordia,' by Kirby Sommers
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