welcome back to "dateline extra." i'm tamron hall. the "costa concordia" luxury liner was sinking into the sea and the passengers and crew still on board were running out of time. some had managed to get of ship but hadn't reached safety yet. triathlete jay garcia and seasoned travelers steve ledtke and his wife, kathy, were in severely overcrowded life boats making their way toward tiny giglio island. newlyweds benjie smith and emily lau were separated.

dancer rose metcalfe also still aboard decided it was time for someone to take charge. here again is "the wreck of the "costa concordia." >> i didn't have any training for this. there was suddenly an absolute rush of crew members, and i think that their superiors in the restaurants, kitchens and the gulley, in the engine room had told them to get out. and suddenly i had more people than i could handle. people were asking -- shouting their names at me, they were panicking and i was basically trying to keep order. i realized that we were actually tipping close to the water and if we stayed there, our feet were going to get wet. i decided to rearrange my muster station on the other side of the ship, on the up side of the ship. and i decided that this was going to be safer so that we weren't actually falling into the sea. so i actually had people coming up to me and asking me if they could go on my life raft. but a life raft can only hold 35 people, and it got to the point

where i was actually responsible for the whole deck. the passengers got their evacuation notice but the crew did not, and they began to panic because they thought they'd been left behind. there were 200 crew members and they all began bottle necking into the corridor, which is a small way and they were crushing one another. they could have killed one another. i managed to reason with them. i said one at a time we're going to go through and we're going to make our way to safety. the problem was the way was impossible because the corridor was so wide, the ship had up turned and become effectively an elevator shaft. it was then that people began linking arms and legs and climbing down one another like a ladder. so at this point everybody

decided, almost everybody, save two of us, decided to make their way back into the ship and try and find a life boat. i didn't think that going back inside of the ship was logical. because it was almost like going into a coffin because you could get trapped inside. >> i think the most terrifying moment was when emily got on to the life boat and i was left behind and i thought i don't know if i can do this without her. she was, you know, she's my planning partner. we brain storm these ideas together. and i didn't want to do it without her. and i felt alone and confused. so i told the crew member, no, no, i'm going to get on this life boat. my wife is here. and so she let me on to the boat. >> when benjie popped his head into the first life boat that we

got in, i was screaming his name, just screaming and screaming, "benjie, benjie, benjie!" so he saw me and he walked toward me. >> so it was more of a relief than i can even convey when i came on to the boat and i put my arms around her and i thought finally we're together, we're on the life boat, we're safe and this is over. but it was not over. we're on the port side of the ship, which is the high side. as they try to lower it down to the water, it starts hitting against the side of the cruise ship. sometimes it free falls for three feet and then we suddenly get jerked into place. >> i suddenly realized that they had no idea what was going on and they did not know how to operate the life boat. they had never done this. and i remember looking down and

thinking if these people don't know what's going to happen and if something happens, we're going to fall straight down and we will die by hitting the deck. so that was the first moment that i felt fear, that i thought we're going to die. >> this went on for about ten minutes before they gave up and realized that they couldn't lower us down to the water. so they hoisted up because up to where we started and told us to get back out on to the ship. and that -- that was a grim, grim moment. >> one by one we just slide off back into sinking ship. and we looked at them and we said what now? what do we do now? all of the life boats are gone. they just shrugged. >> all the ideas are gone. all the life boats are gone. now what do we do?

and it was at this moment when we heard the voice of emily's aunt calling out to us, "benjie and emily!" we just couldn't have been more overjoyed at that moment and heard their voices and realized that the six of us were together again. as the ship was leaning so hard, the floor underneath us was slowly turning into a wall. >> that means on the fourth deck with the railing in front of us, we were going to be trapped under this railing and not be able to ever climb out. and if the ship sank more, we would be trapped there until we die. we all actually had the same thought at the same time, we must climb to the fourth deck to the third deck.

otherwise we don't stand a chance, and we need to do it as fast as we can. >> like so many on the ship, just when benjie smith and emily lau felt a glimmer of hope, it was dashed quickly replaced by fear. how would they climb down an entire deck on a rocking and sinking ship? coming up -- >> we took the whole rope and we threw it over the railing. >> a lifeline fraught with danger. >> i remember thinking repelling down the side of a ship that's slippery with just one rope and no help, i don't think i can do it. >> when "dateline extra" continues. earned overnight.

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since the first day of our marriage, benjie had been singing me a little song every day, an anniversary song. so on day one he sang a song.

day two he sang a song, and he changed the lyrics around a little bit every day. >> it started out as a joke. the day after our wedding, i sang her just a silly little improvised song. >> it would be something like. ♪ today is the first day of our marriage ♪ i'm so happy because i'm with you ♪ something like that. >> newlyweds benjie smith and emily lau knew survival could very well hinge on their next decision. if they stayed where they were, they might die trapped beneath the railing as the "costa concordia" continued to sink. they also knew they had to get themselves and their four family members to safety. but the only way out was down. so now the question was how? >> we found a stairwell. we thought we could go from the fourth deck down to the third deck on that stairwell. and it was like mountain

climbing. we climbed hand over hand down the railing and had to hold each other by the wrists to secure each other as we're climbing, and it took us probably five minutes to climb down one flight of stairs. when we got there, there was a pair of double doors that we tried to open but they were stuck. so much we had to climb back up hand over hand back up that stairwell, back up to the fourth deck where we started. we knew we wanted to be out, out on the side of the ship. so we started scrambling around looking for a rope. i don't know exactly where he found it, but emily's uncle john found a rope that was perfect. it was about 50 feet long, it was about half an inch in diameter. we got this rope and then tied it to the railing, just

basically like that. but then to give us a way to climb down more easily, we made loops in the rope and then twisted those loops into knots like that to give ourselves something to hold on to. so we made a series of these loops and once we had done that, probably ten of these loops, we took the whole rope and we threw it over the railing and then we climbed over the railing and started making our way down the loops. >> the plan was that we should get as close to the water line as possible so when we have to jump, we would be close to the water line. >> we're looking out at the open water. we didn't know that we were close to land because the land was on the other side. >> i remember thinking repelling down the side of the ship that's slippery with just one rope and

no help, i don't think i can do it. we saw other people falling and slipping and breaking ankles, and in that situation if you twist your ankles, you just might die. >> as we're there sitting on the railing where the rope is tied, saying good-bye to each other, i said that i have a song for you. ♪ 14 days might not seem like a long time for a marriage ♪ ♪ but what if those 14 days could last the rest of your life ♪ ♪ 14 days, 14 days, happy anniversary ♪ >> there's not much else to say. everything that needed to be said has been said. an officer who had been on board for a week ran out on to the deck in an absolute panic.

she was white, she was like a zombie and she started spreading the panic, shouting "we have to go, we have to go now, we have to run through here, we have to go." and half of the people believed her and people were crushing one another in absolute panic. so i actually shouted over here and i said "on whose authority?" and she couldn't answer me because she was not thinking. she was in panic. half of the crew members heard this and stopped what they were doing. and i said if you're going to survive this, you have to do it as a team. you don't leave anybody behind and you have to be aware at this points things were crashing around us. i was standing on a doorway and it's very difficult to understand what that's like but when you're gravity is shifted that the side becomes the bottom, so i was standing on a doorway and the drop down into the water was severe.

so i didn't have a clear jump because of the tilt. so we were effectively stranded where we were. i couldn't see any way i was going to make it off the ship safely, so i sat very still where i was, i was watching the water rise and i thought to myself about what a wonderful start to my career i'd had and what an exciting i had led so far and all the things i was grateful for, i was grateful for my degree and my good schooling and at that moment i actually made peace with the fact that i might die and that i had lived a very good life. and then i thought about my parents and what effect it would have on them if i didn't make it, and it was at that point that really my fire kicked in and i was like i can't let them down. >> the boat was tilting so

severely, floors became walls. some passengers had resigned themselves to the fact they might die. but rose metcalfe found her drive to survive. coming up, her last, best hope. >> i felt my pocket and found a flashlight. >> a flashing light and a frantic plea on facebook. >> i said it's friday the 13th, i'm rose, as in "titanic" and our ship is sinking. pray for us to be rescued. >> when "dateline extra" continues. ♪ is it a force of nature? or a sales event? the season of audi sales event is here. audi will cover your first month's lease payment on select models during the season of audi sales event. (bing)

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welcome back to "dateline extra." i'm tamron hall. parts of the "costa concordia" was starting to disappear into the dark waters. some had made it to safety. but to those people still on board, rescue was anything but assured. thoughts of death naturally crept in. but newlyweds benjie smith and

emily lau were not ready to give up. they were faced with a frightening choice, jump or sink. once again "the wreck of the "costa concordia." >> by this point the ship is tilting, tilting, tilting and sinking. we can feel the clock ticking. so i climbed back up and got that rope and untied it from the fourth deck and tied it down on to the third deck so that we could descend on to the exterior hull of the ship. emily's aunt and uncle had actually brought with them a digital camera. >> my name is emily lau. >> and i'm benjie smith. >> we are cruisers from boston on board the "costa concordia." tonight right after dinner, we felt a movement in the boat, like a tip on the boat and i was a little bit scared so i asked benjie what is going on?

we didn't know. and then wine glasses start falling, tvs start moving and things start shattering and people were running around in the hallway. >> so we made a series of quick videos, each of us just saying my name is benjie smith, i'm a passenger on the "costa concordia," today is january 13th, we are holding on to a rope on the port side of the ship. >> people were screaming, the lights flickered on and off. people ran from deck to deck with life preservers. there was no instruction on the p.a. system yet. we went to deck four because we knew that that's where the safety boats were, but when we got to deck four, no one told us what to do, no one told us what the situation was or what had happened. >> we just -- we had felt so forgotten about, we had felt so

abandoned, we wanted someone to know that we had been left behind. and after we did that, we put the camera away and, um, there was a helicopter passing overhead, shining a light down on us. we waved at the helicopter, but no one seemed to be rescuing us. we waited for half an hour and then an hour, and we didn't know why they didn't come for us. >> and then after a while there were five to ten different lifeboats that left, seemed to be coming back to get us. so we were so excited. we said, oh, my god, finally we're not going to die, everything's going to be okay. and they don't approach. none of them came close. so later we realized that the water was too choppy for them to

come close and not crash us and themselves. >> i was in a position where i was able to see the bridge, and i glanced every few minutes back up at the bridge to see if there was any indication of what was happening from seeing officers up there. and actually it was quite quickly that there was nobody there and there was just the emergency light left on, just the red light. and i think once i saw that there were no officers, that we really had been abandoned. >> so approximately two hours after we were on the hull, the bottom of the hull, finally one rescue boat successfully come close enough. it is a rescue boat with a very small hole around two and a half feet to three feet wide that you have to jump into in order to get rescued. two men were manning both sides of the hole just looking at us

saying "jump, jump." >> the water was choppy, and their boat was crashing into the ship, it's bobbing up and down and from where we're at, the lifeboat is about six feet below us. if someone didn't calculate their jump carefully, they could have gotten their legs crushed in between these two boats crashing into each other. >> and i saw the top of the boat and i thought can i land on the top of a boat six feet to eight feet away? i think i can do that. i just counted in my head one, two, three, boom and i just jumped on the top of the boat. >> i can still hear the sound of that crunching noise when i imagined jumping on to that lifeboa lifeboat. >> it's a horrible sound.

people can easily break their legs if they don't sit down. we saw the dining room of this boat is completely trashed with glass everywhere. >> when that boat left, we could see the blinking lights on the life jacket of the people who were still on the ship. and i remember thinking i don't know when those people will get off. >> we're talking about the early hours of morning now, and i could see a coast guard boat which was circling our ship, but it couldn't see us. so that became very obvious when they kept circling and they were never making any note that anyone else was left on the ship and we really felt alone. also there were helicopters going overhead and so this made it seem like they were looking for people but, again, they never stopped or hovered over us. and i actually thought that if the water would rise slowly

enough, we might make it to sunrise. and as a very amateur rough guide to how quickly it was rising, i was looking at my watch and about every 15 minutes i was trying to measure the angle of the mast against the water. so what i was interested in is whether it was speeding up because i wanted to know how quickly we would sink. so in my belief, we were going to completely sink to the bottom of the ocean. at this point when we feel completely alone and left for dead basically, the activity of boat started to reduce. so we decided that we needed to find light in order to be seen. there was a coast guard ship in the front of the ship and there were helicopters overhead. and it was at this point in desperation that i felt in my pocket and found a flashlight. however, it was broken.

so i reconnected the wires and got the flashlight to work and i was flashing it out to the coast guard boat and trying to get their attention. so the coast guard boat put the light on us and then they moved the light up to the helicopters above to signal where we were and back down to us. the problem with where we were was that the mantle of the ship was acting as an overhang so the helicopter couldn't find us with their search lights or their heat cameras but then they flew away. so i asked the indonesia crew member if i could borrow his phone. he told me, no, there's no signal and the battery was about to die, it was on red. so i tried to log into skype and he had no credit so i logged into facebook and i tried to write a private message and it wouldn't send. i tried to write on my father's

wall, and that wouldn't post. so i ended up doing a status update with a photograph and basically calling to all of my friends to help. i basically made a joke. i said it's friday the 13th, i'm rose, as in "titanic" and our ship is sinking, pray for us to be rescued. >> chaos and fear aboard the "costa concordia," some passengers were already inside lifeboats but still not safe. rose metcalfe and fellow crew members were still trapped on the sinking ship doing anything they could think of to get help. coming up -- >> will her prayers be answered? how much time is left? and on shore, heart break. >> people would come up looking for -- >> family. >> and anger. >> i heard someone here talking on the phone with a reporter

saying everything is fine. and i said, no, no, no, that is not what's happening. >> when "dateline extra" continues. ♪ [beeping] take on any galaxy with a car that could stop for you. simulation complete. the new nissan rogue. rogue one: a star wars story. in theaters december 16th. sorry ma'am. no burning here. try new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. they don't taste chalky and work fast. mmmm. incredible. can i try? she doesn't have heartburn. new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. enjoy the relief.

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see if you're eligible for 12 months free at mybreo.com. hi, i'm richard lui. protests are continuing for a fourth night outside trump tower in new york city. there are similar scenes from miami to fresno, california. senior adviser kellyanne conway saying a decision for chief of staff is imminent and could be coming sunday. for now back to "dateline extra." i can tell you that while we were on that lifeboat, i know that i grabbed my neighbor's

hand and we started saying the lord's prayer. once we hit the water, all we wanted to do was get to land. and i looked back at that boat, it was the "titanic." it looked exactly like that with the ship listing and the lights, part of them on, part of them off. people stranded on the ship. as we were looking back at the ship, there was a life jacket floating in the water hitting against the rocks and we had wondered, you know, if that person had made it to shore. it was sad. >> a swarm of boats and helicopters surrounded the "costa concordia" as the rescue operation grew in size and urgency. but passengers racked by fear and panic were still forced to storm packed lifeboats or worse,

jump overboard and hope to swim for it, anything to reach the shore. the small, sleepy island of giglio was jolted wide awake. >> translator: i live in the house right there, right in front of the "costa concordia." and at one point i was eating when i saw the ship tip over and saw people start to jump into the water. i immediately took my boat and i started to go and start to help. i picked up a few people. there was a dead one. he was floating. i pulled him out, put him on the pier. there were so many of them, 4,000 people. there was no time to look at anyone. the people i saw were the ones i later opened my hope to, turned on my feet and the families and little children, all of giglio, we welcomed these people in our hopes and gave them blankets and food. >> once we got on land, it was dark and cold and we heard

people were helping people. >> the pliolice were there, and they had set up tents where we had to go through to get food or clothing or medical attention. the people on the island were very gracious, very helpful, very open. they opened their houses, they opened their lives to us. >> so we just followed the crowd and we just -- there was a church that was nearby. >> translator: i opened the door and outside there were already people on the land with life jackets, with wind breakers who were waiting. when they saw that i had opened the door, silently, very calmly, very orderly, they came in the church and they sat in the pews. they came into the church in the beginning, the young ones, with babies wearing very light clothing. it was cold and it was humid. there were all these kids wearing shorts, t-shirts.

t-shirts. >> so we kind of went off to the side, got up to the front of the church and went off to the side to find a place to kind of sit down. >> translator: they were asking questions in all the languages of the world and i didn't know, i didn't understand. and when i did understand, i didn't know how to answer because -- a little english. just a little english. >> we still didn't know where we were. we figured it was in italy but we didn't know it was an island. >> translator: i asked if there was someone who could translate for me and no one wanted to do it. so i had to do it in italian. i said we are on giglio island, and we're trying to do our best to help you, please be patient. the worst is over. >> we're sitting on one of our life jackets and he had one over him because he was the one that was in the short sleeve shirt. and at some point i grabbed the

altar cloth from this church and with no disrespect intended but i thought that steve needed it and that the lord would understand. so i just grabbed it and put it around steve, we all huddled underneath it actually, just to keep warm through the night. >> it's cold and everybody's kind of quiet because there wasn't much to do. but they had a microphone in the front and people would come up looking for -- >> family. it tears at your heart to see somebody go to the microphone and ask if they've seen their loved one. >> translator: i saw a few guys with blue jackets with the word "costa" written on the chest. i asked them what happened. the response was we're evacuating the ship because the ship is sinking. i felt like i was frozen inside.

that night a remarkable thing happened to giglio island, a situation that could be compared to the apocalypsapocalypse. we had a time to help all these people when about 950 people lived there. so about four times as many people that normally on the island poured on the island. >> it was 3:00 in the morning when we got to this dock. our lifeboat docked here and we didn't know where we were, but we hoped that there was some sign of where to go. >> i was looking around for emergency personnel or crew members to give us some directions, but we couldn't find any. >> at this point we didn't know that anyone had died. we didn't learn that until probably a day later. >> one of the things i remember walking around the board walk here in giglio was a housekeeper just walking around like a zombie and she was saying "housekeeping, housekeeping."

and i knew she was looking for her colleagues. she was looking for her friends and she couldn't find them. and the voice and the look on her face was just heart breaking. >> just haunting. >> we followed the crowd up the hill past the church to a limb hotel called the hotel bahamas. >> we walked through the door of the hotel and we immediately found a spot right here where we could put down our life jackets and sat. and suddenly i heard someone here talking on the phone with a reporter of some kind saying everything is fine, costa is taking care of all of the passengers and everything is peaceful and we know exactly what's happening. and this is when a switch just flipped in my head and i said no, no, no, this is not how the story is going to go down, i'm going to take control of the story. so i grab her phone and started speaking to the phone. i said that is not what's

happening. >> there was no control. there was no one to tell us what to do, there was no announcement of any sort. it was madness. people were falling because the ship was actually sinking quite fast. >> all is not well, we were not taken care of. there was no police, no government, no costa representatives helping us like she was talking about. >> it was just heart breaking to see that there were people who got left behind because we knew what it was like to get left behind. >> heart break was starting to set in as the realization that not everyone would get off alive sunk in but rose metcalfe and her fellow crew members were determined not to go down with the ship. coming up -- >> it was a sheer drop into the water. all my adrenaline was going. it was suddenly as if there was hope again. >> dancer rose metcalfe makes

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the idea that a captain must go down with his ship is a tradition, not mayor time law. but nearly four hours after the captain of the "costa concordia" instructed his crew to steer the boat close to shore and the boat crashed into a rock, a coast guard commander ordered the captain to get back on to his ship. the captain refused. people were still aboard. some would live and others would not. rose metcalfe and her fellow crewmates clung to the belief they would get off that ship alive. we return now to "the wreck of the "costa concordia." >> so at about 3 a.m. i decided that we needed to be on a higher level in order for the helicopter to be able to get us. there was no way they could get to us where we were.

we maneuvered ourselves by crawling, by throwing one another across and to do this i had to use my fingertips and my body was swinging as a free weight underneath and actually climbed window frames. this could have been perilous. it was a sheer drop into the water with the metal of the ship underneath. so all my adrenaline was going. thank goodness i grew up as a tom girl climbing trees. so i was actually very well practiced at had. we had made our way to higher ground. so the helicopter came back to us and it was suddenly as if there was hope again, and all the fighting and the survival had paid off and the rescuer came down on a zip line and the gentleman decided that i should go first as the only woman and they put a horseshoe under --

very loosely around me and the rescuer clamped his legs around my waist and i held on to the zip line. he said to me you have to keep your head in because if you hit the metal, it will kill you, but he was saying this in italian so i could only half understand. so as i was clinging on and he zip wired up, he had to kick away from the ship to swing out around the metal and then up into the helicopter. we get into the helicopter and he pushes me back, unhooks me and signals to go. and i said, no, no, no, no, there's four more. and i made him go down and get every single person that was there. at that point we were flown to a military base in tuscany, and i was questioned by the commander of the base in order to coordinate the rescue. and the reason for this was that

i had heard people banging inside the ship that we couldn't get to. so they needed to know in this very dangerous situation where these people were that needed rescuing. i was quizzed by the commander for so long and i wasn't able to use a phone to ring home. so he actually gave me his personal phone to ring back to the united kingdom and my dad was waiting by the phone, waiting for a call from my mom who was on holiday and he missed the phone by one ring and it went to voice mail so i left him a voice mail to say that i was fine, so obviously that set off alarm bells to him and that our ship had sank and that he needed to call my mom, let her know that i was okay and that he needed to alert the world to what was happening because there were international passengers

that needed help. so he went around and phoned all of the news agencies and got it on the news within the hour. unfortunately he couldn't reach my mom who had left her oftphonn holiday and she didn't see until she was coming home when she was at heathrow in london until my brother pointed up to the te television and said "that's rose's ship." she saw me on the television and that's how she knew i was alive. >> rose was safe and alive but 32 others did not survive that night. some died after becoming trapped inside the ship. others were overcome by the elements after jumping into the sea. many of the survivors say they have been left with a nagging question, why were they among

those who escaped. in search of an answer, benjie smith and emily lau returned to giglio island two years later. >> i'm either nervous or sea sick. >> i think more than anything else coming here i wanted to satifysat f satify -- satisfy a curiosity. the shipwreck isn't such a dominant force in our daily lives. i kind of wanted to test that to see are we really as well as we believe we are? i really want to see it but it's a very weird feeling. >> oh, my god. >> that is just unbelievable. you actually can't see any of the deck where we climbed down because it's all underwater. >> i come to giglio wanting to see what giglio is actually like and i want to see the impact of

the shipwreck. >> we really wanted to come back and go to the hotel bahamas and see the inn keeper and give him a hug and thank him again. >> you know, he was the person who gave us a place for a few hours, who took care of us and he gave us a hug. he let us call our family. >> hello! >> and it's very emotional in that moment when you felt completely abandoned and you want to be angry at the world and the world said you know what, not all of us are bad, someone's nice, too. >> do you remember walking along on all of the railings, right up on the top deck there, walking along, holding on to the railing, holding hands? >> yeah. >> and then this, i think the top level here, this is where there's a restaurant and that's

where the spa was. >> i was expecting this to be bigger, but since half of it is in the water, it just -- i don't know, it looks really sad. when i saw the "costa concordia" sitting powerless in the water, looking so small, i actually felt a as soon as of m-- sense misplaced inc. anger. i don't know how to feel about this anymore. i was expecting this to be bigger, i was expecting to feel powerless but in front of it now, i kind of feel nothing. >> since the accident i've emigrated to america and i'm trying to find my feet again in my career. it's a challenge every single day to try and find myself again.

i felt like i lost who i was because of that shipwreck. it's changed a lot of aspects of my life and brought out strengths in me that i didn't know i had and weaknesses in me that i have to deal with. i had the dream job and i was set to have a brilliant career as a performer, and i have barely been dancing since this incident. i've had nightmares nearly every night since the shipwreck. i'm still suffering every day. ♪ ♪

>> from time to time i wake up in the middle of the night and i see myself on that boat still trying to get out. i still dream about it. it's something that i will never, ever forget as long as i live. there's no closure to that nightmare. i don't know what happens. i doesn't know if i'm able to swim to shore or if i don't make it. i look at trying to live every day to the fullest. i was able to see my granddaughter born. and i appreciate my family more

today than before. >> the disaster changed me in that i ended up quitting my job, a job that i dearly loved and i think that was a result of my reaction to the disaster. i think i do still have some unresolved issues. >> as a physician, especially the first few months, every patient wanted me to discuss what happened on the boat. you know, we both went to counseling after. you know, you talk to the psychiatrist and you start weeping and, you know, i'm not -- i don't do that ever, you know. you know what, people forget 32

people died and nobody should have died on that boat. >> when we first started telling our story to george ijournalistd it because we really felt like it was important. it was important for future cruisers, it was important for safety. about four months after the shipwreck, i started working on a book and i worked on it for about a year. i wanted to share that story with others because everybody's been through some kind of catastrophe. not everyone got off a sinking ship but everyone had something that happened to them, and by taking this story into my own hands and writing a book, it made it possible to regain control over my own destiny in a certain way.

>> benjie is a writer and i'm really not. my medium is music. and somehow the shipwreck gave me focus. during the evacuation i told myself if i don't die, i'm not going to be scared anymore. and so i decided not to be scared anymore. and i wrote an album of original music. ♪ ♪ >> i wrote to express the feeling of pain from feeling guilty being alive, feeling angry at being abandoned, feeling sad for seeing other people suffer. our experience is telling longer and deeper story than just evacuation, than just the shipwreck. ♪ ♪

right now when i have dreams, they're just about the future. we're no longer just trapped in the past. somehow i think the whole ordeal gave us some motivation to do more in our lives, you know, to give us some mission. i no longer dream about the "costa concordia" at all. ♪ ♪ the captain of the "costa concordia" francesco schettino was found guilty of multiple manslaughters and abandoning ship and he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. he said he saved lives by

steering the ship toward land and he said he didn't abandon ship, he just fell into a lifeboat. that's it for this episode of "dateline extra." i'm tamron hall. thank you for watching. a man trapped in a burning car. >> i didn't know if the engine was going to explode. >> i thought he died. >> clinging to life to a tiny tree. >> all of us were shocked to see people in peril. >> flipped upside down on the runway, sent flying on the truck. >> it knocked me out of the street to the curb. >> thrown from