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Porcellacchia said that part of the hull looked "pretty bad", which might complicate the attachment of sponsons – large steel boxes – needed for the eventual refloating. That is due to take place sometime in 2014, after which point the Concordia will, at long last, leave Giglio's waters. Parbuckling is a common means of righting wrecked ships but had never been carried out on a vessel of the Concordia's size.
Costa Concordia disaster
A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it! “I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats. Schettino was convicted of multiple manslaughter as well as abandoning ship after leaving before all the passengers had reached safety.
Passengers and personnel
The authorities said Monday that the first phase of the undertaking had been successful and that the ship was afloat for the first time since it hit a reef and capsized in early 2012, setting the stage for an operation unparalleled in the annals of marine salvage. Work has begun to remove the tons of rocky reef embedded into the Concordia cruise ship's hull, off Giglio Island in Italy. Never before has such an enormous cruise ship been righted, and the crippled Concordia didn't budge for the first three hours after the operation began, engineer Sergio Girotto told reporters. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats.
Costa Concordia: human remains found at cruise ship wreck site
Costa Concordia righted after massive salvage effort - CNN
Costa Concordia righted after massive salvage effort.
Posted: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Now, the marooned hulk dominates the Giglio skyline and has become a sinister attraction of what some call disaster tourism — drawing hundreds of gawking tourists who snap away at the photo opportunity. Schettino faces multiple manslaughter charges as well as charges of causing the accident and abandoning ship. He was released this week from house arrest, and in his first TV interview, he blamed his junior officers.
Six months after one of the biggest passenger shipwrecks in recent history, relatives of the dead attended a memorial service Friday near the site of the disaster. Once the ship is upright, engineers hope to attach an equal number of tanks filled with water on the other side to balance the ship, anchor it and stabilize it during the winter months. The flat-keeled hull itself will be resting on a false seabed some 30 metres (100 feet) underwater. The operation, known in nautical parlance as parbuckling, was used on the USS Oklahoma in 1943 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Salvage
Details of the full extent of the collision have not been released in the ongoing incident but the video supplied by Guardia Costiera did not appear to show harsh weather conditions or heavy seas. The Coast Guard later announced that both vessels had arrived in Augusta, Sicily and were being inspected. Sloane says the priority is to remove the ship in one piece in order to minimize impact on the environment. Weather permitting, the Costa Concordia should be refloated and towed to a mainland port by early next year.
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But the 300-meter (1,000-foot) Concordia has been described as the largest cruise ship ever to capsize and subsequently require the complex rotation. The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland. “Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance. Dozens of cruise ships, out of commission during the pandemic that brought tourism and demand for trips on the massive liners to a halt, have been docked off Italy's coasts for a year and a half.
Rescue
The lifeboats wouldn't drop down because the ship was tilted on its side, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the side of the ship for hours in the cold. People were left to clamber down a rope ladder over a distance equivalent to 11 stories. According to the Genoa daily newspaper Il Secolo XIX there were some 4,000 passengers in all aboard the ship, which arrived in Genoa from Marseille. For reasons unclear, two of Russia's sanctioned military supply ships have had to make a heroic journey around Europe after their latest run to the naval base at Tartus, Syria. The freighter Sparta IV has traveled back and forth between Russia and Tartus for years, moving equipment and stores for the Russian military. Tartus is an important base, providing the Russian Navy with a year-round, sanctions-free haven in the Mediterranean.
The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection. An investigation focused on shortcomings in the procedures followed by Costa Concordia's crew and the actions of her captain, Francesco Schettino, who left the ship prematurely. He left about 300 passengers on board the sinking vessel, most of whom were rescued by helicopter or motorboats in the area. Schettino was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Despite receiving its own share of criticism, Costa Cruises and its parent company, Carnival Corporation, did not face criminal charges.
GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy - In an unprecedented maritime salvage operation, engineers on Monday gingerly wrestled the hull of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia off the Italian reef where the cruise ship has been stuck since January 2012. Whether or not Captain Francesco Schettino was trying to impress his girlfriend is debatable. The wreck was not the fault of unexpected weather or ship malfunction—it was a disaster caused entirely by a series of human errors. For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.
The Costa Concordia was owned by Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & PLC. When launched in 2005, it was Italy’s largest cruise ship, measuring 951 feet (290 metres) long with a passenger capacity of 3,780; by comparison, the Titanic was 882.5 feet (269 metres) long and could accommodate up to 2,435 passengers. It featured four swimming pools, a casino, and reportedly the largest spa on a ship. In July 2006 the vessel undertook its maiden voyage, a seven-day cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, with stops in Italy, France, and Spain. Last January, the captain of the Italian mega-cruise ship Costa Concordia committed an apparent act of maritime bravado a few yards from the shore of a Tuscan island.
Giglio is part of a Tuscan archipelago in a marine sanctuary where dolphins and fish are plentiful. And even if the hull remains intact, bunker fuel left in the tanks and engines, along with other harmful chemicals such as cleaning supplies could also befoul the water if not removed promptly. So far, the biggest problem the uplift team has faced was detachment of a flotation caisson in April.
This morning, though, the ship was successfully refloated, the Guardian reports. Environmentalists are relieved since the ship has been marring a marine sanctuary for more than two years, while local residents say they are looking forward to no longer having to see a giant wreck each time they look out to sea. Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated. During this time, work also began to remove the vessel in what was the largest maritime salvage operation in history.
Costa Concordia was declared a "constructive total loss" by the cruise line's insurer, and her salvage was "one of the biggest maritime salvage operations". On 16 September 2013, the parbuckle salvage of the ship began, and by the early hours of 17 September, the ship was set upright on her underwater cradle. In July 2014, the ship was refloated using sponsons (flotation tanks) welded to her sides, and was towed 320 kilometres (200 mi) to her home port of Genoa for scrapping, which was completed in July 2017. In the coming months the team carrying out the salvage operation – Titan Salvage from the United States and the Italian engineering company Micoperi – will have to examine quite how damaged the starboard side of the ship is in order to decide how to proceed.
The mammoth vessel is an eyesore and oppressive reminder of tragedy for local residents. A huge hunk of granite weighing some 80 tons is embedded in the hull of the marooned ship. Giovanni Andolfi, a 63-year-old resident who spent his career at sea, called the crews "the best brains in the field." But he was eager to see them finish.
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