So much fear, but in the end the tragedy was avoided. However, those experienced on Thursday afternoon on board a 22-metre yacht owned by Forza Italia senator Stefania Craxi and her husband, the entrepreneur Marco Bassetti, were moments of terror. The flames suddenly broke out on board while the motorboat “La Corsa” was sailing on the route from the island of Giglio to Elba, around midday. The three occupants together with the owners, the captain of the yacht was present, tried to put out the fire with fire extinguishers while waiting for help, alerted as soon as they realized that the flames continued to spread, but every attempt to put out the fire was soon proved unsuccessful: in the end, the three made the decision to abandon the boat to its fate and board the life raft.
The Portoferraio coast guard, who intervened with both naval and air means, rescued the owners of the boat and the commander: the men in uniform identified the three people about nine miles from Marina di Campo. The senator and the entrepreneur were found in a clear state of shock, but fortunately they did not suffer any physical consequences from the ordeal and were brought back to the mainland.
A worse fate instead befell the yacht: engulfed in flames, the vessel slowly sank and settled on the seabed at around 200 metres. Having saved the lives of Craxi and Bassetti, the security personnel who arrived with a Sar CP 892 patrol boat around 1.30 pm continued monitoring operations in the area to verify the existence of environmental damage, especially resulting from possible spills of fuel at sea. From an initial analysis, however, it seems that the risks of pollution for the area have been averted. Instead, it will be up to the Elba harbor master’s office to try to establish the causes of the fire.
Investigators tend to believe that it may have been a technical failure of the engine, both due to the rapidity of the flames’ spread and because there were no particularly unfavorable weather or sea conditions in the area. Apparently, the captain was the first to notice the fire on board the yacht: he noticed thick smoke starting to rise from the engine compartment and immediately launched an SOS, alerting the Portoferraio coast guard operations room.
Multiple vehicles were sent to the scene, including a Navy ship and a helicopter from the Sarzana coast guard air base. For Senator Craxi and Marco Bassetti – CEO of Banijay Entertainment and founder of Endemol Italia, a lot of fear but no consequences.
