The hero Italian coast guard official who ripped the cowardly captain a new one for abandoning his capsized cruise ship is a motorcycle-riding tough guy that was brought to tears when he heard that people had drowned on the night of the crash.
“I sometimes cry and I don’t think that is a weakness,” Gregorio De Falco admitted to the Italian daily La Repubblica, recounting for them his immediate reaction after learning helpless passengers had drowned when they attempted to swim ashore from the stranded Costa Concordia. “Humanity is not a weakness.”
De Falco hails from the picturesque coastal town of Sorrento, near Naples, which is not far from where Capt. Francesco Schettino was also born and raised.
That’s where the similarities end.
A day after a bombshell telephone recording emerged where De Falco ordered Schettino to “Get back on board for f–k sake,” the 48-year-old official has become an instant hero.
“I am not a hero or an iron man. My team and I just did our duty,” he told the Italian daily Il Tirreno.
De Falco met with prosecutors yesterday to recount for them what occurred Friday when the Italian cruise ship ran aground after Schettino veered off course. Prosecutors have charged Schettino with manslaughter after he abandoned ship before all the passengers were safely evacuated.
Andrea Gori, who is friends with De Falco, told Britain’s The Guardian that his colleague was “really tired” after his talk with Schettino.
“After the capsizing he told us, ‘I did what any coast guard would have done,'” said Gori.
De Falco, who is married and has two daughters, has been a member of the Italian coast guard since 1993 and graduated college with a law degree. In his free time, De Falco has a daredevil streak in him and enjoys riding his Suzuki motorbike around the Tuscan countryside.
Friends said De Falco, who is stationed in the Tuscan port city of Livorno since 2005, was astonished to hear his voice on the evening news Tuesday after audio tapes of his conversation with Schettino were played on the air.
“Gregorio was shocked to hear his voice on television and continues to say that he is amazed by this reaction,” said Gori, who is also a spokesman at the Livorno harbor master’s office.
“He is decisive and believes 100 percent in what he does,” Gori added. “When I heard the tapes of him talking to Schettino, it was him all over.”
De Falco’s wife told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera the her husband is no hero.
“The worrying thing is that people like my husband who simply do their duty every day, immediately become idols, personalities, heroes in this country. That is not normal,” she said.
But judging by Facebook and Twitter comments, most Italians disagree with her.
“For every Schettino in this world there thankfully is a De Falco,” read one tweet.