I first saw the Costa Concordia glinting in the winter sun from 20,000 feet as my flight from London made a slow descent on its way to Rome 's Fiumicino airport . It seemed a distant blade of light lying next to a speck of an island . A surge of gasps and chatter reverberated around the cabin as Italian passengers craned their necks to see it . As I later approached the island on a ferry , the ship again came into view almost as soon as the ferry left the mainland . As we closed in , the vast scale of the cruise ship became clear . It was like looking at an apartment block lying in the sea : a ship , yes , but everything about its orientation was wrong . She lay on her side , the hull obscenely exposed to our widening eyes . The ferry passed within a couple hundred feet as we entered the main port of Giglio Island and the huge chunk of rock , the size of a car , could clearly be seen embedded in her hull . Over the next two weeks , I spent a large part of every day staring at the wreck -- and yet still it surprised me . Each morning my crew and I would descend the vertiginous road from our hotel , round a sharp bend and there was this colossal ship on her side . From the top of the island , the Costa Concordia looked exactly like a bath-time toy , carelessly capsized by a child 's hand . But this surreal tableau was etched in epic proportions . Now that the frantic first reports of what happened are behind us , CNN has built up a much more comprehensive view of what went wrong , thanks to documents , congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of experts , crew members , witnesses and passengers . Concordia disaster focuses attention on how cruise industry operates . Since the night the Concordia capsized January 13 , CNN has continued to dig to figure out what happened aboard the ship and why . We spoke to officials with Costa Cruise Lines as well as Italian investigators examining the incident . We 've also spoken with officials with the International Maritime Organization , the body that oversees cruise safety . From a broad perspective , CNN examined the cruise industry as a whole . What we found will be unsettling for anyone who has taken or is thinking of taking a cruise : allegations of inadequate safety briefings and chaos in the minutes after the collision ; a captain who failed to sound a general alarm for almost an hour , meaning vital , lifesaving assemblies at lifeboat stations did not take place ; and a crew that felt unable to act without clear orders from their captain . In some cases , lifeboats were not able to be launched because by the time the general alarm finally sounded at 10:48 p.m. , the ship was leaning over too far to allow the lifeboats to launch . Thirty-two people died in the Concordia disaster . We learned that 6,000 tons of water entered the Concordia in just 20 minutes . For a ship three times the weight of the Titanic , it was fatal . Almost immediately , key equipment in the engine room was knocked out . The ship 's backup generators were flooded . Computers that monitor the ship 's stability were also compromised . CNN 's documentary team obtained remarkable footage from the ship 's bridge that revealed Captain Francesco Schettino grappling with a situation that was already out of control . His ship had a hole below the waterline the width of a football field . We also found compelling evidence that Schettino 's decision to `` salute '' the island of Giglio by sailing perilously close caused the accident , but also that this was n't the first time the Costa Concordia had sailed within a few hundred yards of the rocks . Schettino is still awaiting trial on multiple charges of manslaughter , causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship . Schettino escaped the ship on a lifeboat while the ship was capsizing . A transcript of his tense exchange with Port Authority officials can be read here , including their order to him to `` Get on board , damn it ! '' Perhaps the most chilling account of the night in CNN 's documentary comes from a family on board - Californians Dean and Georgia Ananias and their daughters Valerie and Cindy . Their story , together with previously unseen footage of that night , gives a real sense of the terror of those trying to escape . The Ananiases were among the last to get off the Concordia alive . They are cruise veterans , having been on more than 60 voyages , but now they say they wo n't step foot on another ship until the industry changes . Some lessons have already being learned . Costa is introducing new rules about safety briefings , mandatory additional life jackets and , crucially , new equipment is being introduced to accurately track all of Costa 's ships and notify headquarters if the captain decides to take a detour . I 've never been on a cruise ; I love the sea and I 'm a keen sailor . But knowing all the concerns and questions about safety aboard cruise ships , I 'd want answers before I took a cruise . I would feel more comfortable when the reforms that the International Maritime Organization are recommending are made mandatory .
Writer on seeing Concordia : It looked like an apartment block lying in the sea . CNN documentary digs into why the ship capsized January 13 and the chaos on board the cruise ship . The documentary examines questions about the cruise industry as a whole .