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Final approval to right Costa Concordia
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Authorities have given the final go-ahead for a daring attempt today to pull upright the crippled Costa Concordia cruise liner from the waters off Tuscany, a make-or-break engineering feat that has never before been tried in such conditions.
The ship capsized there 20 months ago, and Italy’s national Civil Protection agency waited until sea and weather conditions were forecast for dawn today before giving the approval. In a statement yesterday, the agency said the sea and wind conditions “fall within the range of operating feasibility.”
The Concordia struck a reef near Giglio Island’s coast on the night of January 13, 2012, took on water through a 70-meter gash in its hull and capsized just outside the harbor.
Thirty-two of the 4,200 passengers and crew members died. The bodies of two of the dead have never been recovered yet, and may lie beneath the wreckage.
Never before have engineers tried to right such a huge ship so close to land. If the operation succeeds, the Concordia will be towed away and broken up for scrap.
Salvage experts had originally hoped to right the 115,000 ton vessel last spring, but heavy storms hampered work.
Crews have raced to get the Concordia upright before another winter season batters the ship against its rocky perch — damage that would increase the chance that it couldn’t be towed away in one piece.
Salvage master Nick Sloane seemed optimistic in the final hours before the operation began, saying yesterday that testing of the machinery in recent days had actually lifted the 300-meter ship up about 10 centimeters, or 1.5 degrees.
There have been concerns that the rocks of the reef on which the Concordia is resting were so embedded in the hull that the ship would resist being pulled off.
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