A Costa Concordia crew member broke into tears Monday as she testified that she was ordered to tell panicked passengers to go back to their cabins just before the cruise ship sank.
Jacqueline Abad Quine said she was making announcements after the ship struck rocks off Tuscany.
“I was ordered to tell the passengers everything was under control,” Quine, a deputy cabin services director, said Monday.
She said the cruise director told her to say that there was just a blackout “and everyone should return to their cabins and that things would be returning to normal as quickly as possible.”
But frightened passengers gathered near muster stations so they could flee in lifeboats, she said.
“They were pushing each other, trying to get on, but we didn’t have the order to let them get on board, Quine added tearfully.
“Eventually, the order to abandon ship came from the second officer. I made a human chain with others to get into a lifeboat, and there must have been around 150 people in it,” she said during the manslaughter trial of Capt. Francesco Schettino.
Quine’s boss, Francesco Raccomandato, denied that he ordered her to tell passengers to go back to their cabins.
Thirty two people died in the January 2012 disaster.