Live coverage (Reuters) : Costa Concordia Salvage Operation Begins
From CNN
Delayed by three hours because of strong thunderstorms, the unprecedented operation of salvaging the massive Costa Concordia cruise began Monday morning off the coast of Italy, near the island of Giglio.
The giant vessel ran aground and tipped over in January 2012, killing 32 of the 4,200 people on board.
Righting the ship could
take up to two days, but engineer Sergio Girotto said he's an optimist,
expecting the operation to take about 12 hours.
"I don't think we will continue into the night," he said. "After we start pulling, we should see something."
port of Giglio
The Process
It sounds counterintuitive, but in order to salvage the Costa Concordia, crews will sink portions of it deeper underwater.
The ship will then be
pulled off the seabed and rotated onto giant platforms 30 meters below
the water level.
Areas of the ship that have been dry for months will be
submerged and filled with water.
It's a process known as "parbuckling," and it's become a household term in Giglio, the tiny island that was transformed when the Costa Concordia ran aground off its coast in January 2012.
A ship this large and this heavy -- weighing 114,000 tons -- has never been parbuckled before.
Normally, crews would blow up the ship or take it apart on site.
But officials say that's
not an option with the Costa Concordia, because the ship is filled with
toxins, and because there are two bodies still believed to be either
trapped between the ship and its rocky resting place or somewhere deep
in the ship's hollow hull.
Waiter, passenger still missing
The two missing victims from the cruise ship disaster are Russel Rebello of India, and Maria Grazia Trecarichi of Sicily, Italy.
Rebello, 33, was a cruise waiter who was last seen helping passengers off the ship.
Trecarichi was on the
cruise to celebrate her 50th birthday with her 17-year-old daughter, one
of thousands of people who survived the deadly shipwreck.
On Monday,
her daughter and husband will watch crews try to rotate the ship and,
hopefully, find Trecarichi's remains.
Technicians and salvage managers from all over the world will be watching closely to see what goes wrong and what works.
"It will set the new standard for maritime salvage," Giovanni Ceccarelli, the project's engineering manager, told CNN.
Hundreds of people and
dozens of companies have collaborated on the preparations, but the
parbuckling will come down to 12 people, including the salvage master
and specialized technicians, who will be guiding the operation from
inside a prefabricated control room set up on a tower on a barge in
front of the ship.
A complex operation
Parbuckling, or righting, the ship could be done in a day or so -- provided the weather conditions agree.
So far, they seem to be, officials said on a website tracking the operation.
So far, they seem to be, officials said on a website tracking the operation.
It's a major turning point in a salvage operation that has cost the Costa Crociere company, owned by American firm Carnival Cruises, more than $600 million -- so far.
Tall towers anchored
onto the rocky shoreline between the ship and the island have been
fitted with computer-operated pulley-like wheels.
As the rotation begins,
the wheels will guide thick cables and chains pulling the middle third
of the ship from under its belly toward Giglio island.
At the same time, more
chains and cables attached to hollow boxes that have been welded onto
the ship's port side will pull the ship from the top toward the open
sea.
After about four to six
hours, the pulleys and cables will be rendered useless as gravity takes
over and the ship essentially finishes the process, relying on the
buoyant boxes alone to control the speed at which it rights itself.
Technicians will pump
compressed air into the boxes to control the water levels, which will
create buoyancy to slow the ship's rotation until it eventually comes to
rest on makeshift "mattresses" put in place on the steel platforms.
If all goes well, the
ship will lift off the rocks in one piece and not separate or break
apart.
If things go wrong, it could be disastrous.
If things go wrong, it could be disastrous.
Toxins, other items onboard
The ship contains a mix
of toxins that would be devastating for the environment if leaked into
the water, which would happen if the ship breaks apart or sinks.
According to the Costa
Concordia's inventory list published in the Italian press and confirmed
by Costa, thousands of liters of thick lubricants, paints, insecticides,
glue and paint thinners were on board before it set sail three hours
before it crashed.
There are also 10 large tanks of oxygen and 3,929 liters of carbon dioxide.
That's not all.
Refrigerators filled with milk, cheese, eggs and vegetables have been closed tight since the disaster.
And the freezers that
have not burst under the water pressure are still locked with their
rotting thawed contents sealed inside, including 1,268 kilograms of
chicken breasts, 8,200 kilograms of beef, 2,460 kilograms of cheese and
6,850 liters of ice cream.
What's next
As the ship rotates,
much more water will enter the ship than will spill out, salvage
operators say. That fresh seawater will dilute some of the toxic mix,
but it will all eventually have to be purified and pumped out before the
ship is towed across the sea for dismantling at its final port -- a
location that remains to be determined.
In the meantime, the
salvage operators have set up two rings of oil booms with absorbent
sponges and skirts that extend into the water to catch any debris that
may escape.
Once the ship is upright, it will be months before the contents are removed, likely not until it reaches its final port.
At that time, Costa
officials say they intend to remove personal effects from the state
rooms and return those to each passenger, no matter how soggy the
contents might be.
None of that is expected to happen before next
summer.
Meanwhile, captain
Francesco Schettino, who misguided the ship off course, faces charges of
manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster and abandoning ship with
passengers still on board.
His trial resumes in Grosseto on September
23.
A turning point
Once the ship is upright, the salvage operation changes dramatically.
A tiny robotic submarine
with surveillance cameras will survey the damaged side of the ship and
create the models they need to plan for the next phase of operations.
"It will look like a high-impact car accident when it is lifted," Nick Sloane, the salvage master, told CNN. "It won't be pretty."
For days, salvage
workers have been running simulations and testing their equipment.
A
steady hum of machinery out on the wreckage site could be heard night
and day in Giglio harbor.
The ship looks nothing like it did months ago, when it seemed gigantic against the tiny island.
Now giant cranes, barges and generator towers dwarf the wreckage.
Success or failure, no matter what happens on Monday, the Concordia will never again look the same.
5 convicted over deadly shipwreck in Italy
Links :
Links :
- BBC : Costa Concordia salvage operation begins
- Blog GeoGarage
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