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Workers begin tough task of lifting Costa Concordia off a Tuscan reef
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A COMPLEX system of pulleys and counterweights yesterday began lifting the Costa Concordia cruise ship from its side on a Tuscan reef where it capsized in 2012, an anxiously awaited operation that has never been attempted before on such a huge liner.
The crippled vessel wouldn’t budge for some three hours after the operation to right it began, engineer Sergio Girotto said. But after 6,000 tons of force were applied, “we saw the detachment” of the ship from the reef using undersea cameras, Girotto said.
He said the cameras did not immediately reveal any sign of two bodies that were never recovered from among the 32 people who died during the disaster.
The operation was expected to take some 10-12 hours, with the initial hours winching the ship off the reef imperceptible to the unaided eye.
The operation began three hours later than planned after an early morning storm pushed back the scheduled positioning of a floating command room center close to the wreckage. Once it was in place, engineers using remote controls began guiding a synchronized leverage system of pulleys, counterweights and huge chains looped under the Concordia’s carcass to delicately nudge the ship free from its rocky seabed perch just outside Giglio Island’s harbor.
The goal is to raise it from its side by 65 degrees to vertical, as a ship would normally be, for eventual towing.
The operation, known in nautical parlance as parbuckling, is a proven method to raise capsized vessels.
The USS Oklahoma was parbuckled by the US military in 1943 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But the 300-meter, 115,000-ton Concordia has been described as the largest cruise ship ever to capsize and subsequently require the complex rotation.
The Concordia crashed into a reef on January 13, 2012, after the captain steered the luxury liner too close to the rocky coastline of Giglio, part of a chain of islands in pristine waters.
Despite the violent capsizing, no major pollution had been detected in the waters near the ship.
Fuel was siphoned out early in the salvage operation, but food and human waste are still trapped inside. Should the Concordia break apart during the rotation, or spew out toxic materials as it is raised, absorbent barriers were set in place to catch any leaks.
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