Evacuees offered $14,460

ROME – How much is it worth to suffer through a terrifying cruise ship grounding?

Italian ship operator Costa Crociere SpA on Friday put the figure at $14,460 plus reimbursement for the cost of cruise tickets and extra travel expenses, seeking to cut a deal with as many passengers as possible to take the wind out of class-action lawsuits stemming from the Jan. 13 grounding of its Costa Concordia cruise liner off Tuscany.

But many passengers are refusing to accept the deal, saying they can’t yet put a figure on the costs of the trauma they endured. And lawyers are backing them up, telling passengers it’s far too soon to know how people’s lives and livelihoods might be affected by the experience.

“We’re very worried about the children,” said Claudia Urru, of Cagliari, Sardinia, who was on the Concordia with her husband and two sons, ages 3 and 12, when it capsized.

Her elder son is seeing a psychiatrist: He won’t speak about the incident or even look at television footage of the grounding.

“He’s terrorized at night,” she told the Associated Press. “He can’t go to the bathroom alone. We’re all sleeping together, except my husband, who has gone into another room because we don’t all fit.”

As a result, she said, her family retained a lawyer because they don’t know what the real impact – financial or otherwise – of the trauma will be. She said her family simply isn’t able to make such decisions now.

Costa’s offer, which covers compensation for lost baggage and psychological trauma, was the result of negotiations with several consumer groups who say they are representing 3,206 passengers from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the massive cruise ship hit a reef off the island of Giglio.

It’s not clear, though, how many of those passengers will take the deal, even though they’re guaranteed payment within a week of signing on.

In addition to the lump-sum indemnity, Costa, a unit of the world’s biggest cruise operator, Miami-based Carnival Corp., said it would reimburse uninjured passengers the full costs of their cruise, their return travel expenses and any medical expenses they sustained after the grounding.

Costa said it wouldn’t deduct anything that insurance companies might kick in.

The deal does not apply to the hundreds of crew on the ship, many of whom have lost their jobs, the roughly 100 people who were injured in the chaotic evacuation, or the families who lost loved ones.

Sixteen bodies have already been recovered from the disaster, and another 16 people who were on board are missing and presumed dead.

On Friday, the first known lawsuit was filed against Costa and Carnival by one of the Concordia’s crew members, Gary Lobaton of Peru. The suit, filed in Chicago federal court, accuses Carnival and Costa of negligence because of an unsafe evacuation and is seeking class-action status.

In Italy, some consumer groups have already signed on as injured parties in the criminal case against the Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino, who is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship.

Roberto Corbella, who represented Costa in the negotiations with consumer groups that led to the offer, said the deal provides passengers with quick and “generous” restitution that with all the reimbursements could amount to some $18,500 per passenger, even nonpaying children. “The big advantage that they have is an immediate response, no legal expenses, and they can put this whole thing behind them,” he said.