Italian Miss Survivor of the Earthquake and the Costa Concordia Shipwreck

Aug 26, 2016

The 20 year-old Italian student, Nicole di Mario lived to win a beauty pageant prize this week after her latest brush with death – escaping the earthquake in central Italy, four years after surviving Costa Concordia. When the earthquake struck central Italy on Wednesday, Nicole was sleeping in a family house in Borbone, 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the village of Amatrice which was wiped out by the quake killing hundreds of people.

“I felt everything was shaking. I was very scared. We got out and didn’t go back into the house. We spent the first night on the football field.” she told local newspaper Corriere di Rieti. She was in Borbone for the funeral of her grandmother Domenica, which was eventually held on Thursday on the village square because the church was no longer considered safe.

The quake, which killed at least 267 people, took her back to January 2012 when she was on board the Costa Concordia when the cruise ship hit rocks and capsized off the island of Giglio.

“It was dramatic, horrific experience. I was trapped in the cabin because the ship was tilting from one side to the other,” she described her experience of the shipwreck that left 32 people dead. “I had to queue up for a life vest and I managed to jump into the last lifeboat, number 25.”

On Thursday night Nicole took part in the Miss Umbria beauty pageant. She didn’t win, but finished with the Miss Elegance prize.