By Joe Corcoran/KPR
Bowling Green, KY – The death toll is now eleven following the capsizing of the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the coast of Italy Friday with at least two dozen still missing.
One of the 42-hundred passengers aboard the ship when it ran aground was 28 year old Lauren Moore of Bowling Green. She was on a vacation with four other friends.
Lauren says she and her friends are fine, at least physically. She says,
"We will probably all be dealing with the aftermath of this tragedy for quite some time. So those scars we'll find out later."
They were having dinner on the ship's third floor Friday night when they heard a loud sound that they know now was the ship hitting a rock. She says,
"All the sudden all the plates and the glasses just started hitting the ground and shattering and the boat started leaning to the side and everyone just started getting up and running away and that's when the chaos just started setting in."
The lights went out and announcements were being run that it was just an electrical problem that would be fixed soon.
She and one other friend got separated from the rest of her group in the pandemonium but made it back to her cabin hoping to meet them there. She changed clothes out of her formal dinner wear, grabbed her cell phone, wallet and life jacket from her room and then headed for the life boats. She says,
"We actually had no idea where the lifeboats were because at that point we had yet to have the emergency drill. So we just started running and we just started running down the stairs and eventually we hit the deck where the lifeboats were."
There was not a safety lesson for them, there was one scheduled the next day after they'd been on board nearly two days.
She got into a lifeboat and used her cell to call her parents back home to tell them what happened and what they were about to see soon but that she was fine. She says she hasn't been in touch with the cruise line and they haven't been in touch with her yet so she doesn't know what will happen next.