By
Rebecca Gibson |
Titan-Micoperi consortium successfully raised Costa Cruises’ stricken Costa Concordia from the coast of Giglio Island.
Following a 19-hour parbuckling operation, the 114,000 gt ship has been removed from the rocks and rotated 65 degrees to a vertical position, where she is resting on a 30 metre-deep artificial seabed consisting of six steel platforms.
Using a hydraulic cable-pulling mechanism, the salvage team dislodged Concordia’s hull from the reef and by midnight local time, she had rotated around 25 degrees, enabling her to rotate the remaining 35 degrees using her own momentum and the weight of the ballast water in the sponsons. Operations were temporarily suspended for an hour at 7pm to allow for maintenance work to prevent slack cables from interfering with the tensioned cables, before Concordia reached an upright position at 4am.
“While project is complex and we’ve had issues and concerns from the beginning to the end of the operations, the uprighting of the ship was the most complex part because she was taken from a static to a dynamic position and we were not 100 per cent sure it would work,” said Franco Porcellacchia, the director of technical operations at Costa Cruises, during a press conference on 17 September. “During the first rotation stage, the power was generated by strand jacks, cables and forces on the hull, enabling the vessel to move at a speed of three metres per hour. The higher speed of rotation in the second phase was generated by the quantity of ballast water in the sponsons and was controlled by the salvage master.”
Engineers and authorities will now perform in-depth inspections to assess whether earlier fears regarding potential sewage spillages and gas leaks from decomposing organic matter are unfounded, as they appear to be. They will also analyse the extent of damage and determine whether the previously inaccessible areas of Concordia are safe to enter.
“There is major damage on the port side of ship but there are no tears in the structure and the damage we can now see from a distance is somewhat magnified by the fact the compressed part is the side with the balconies,” said Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's Civil Protection Authority, speaking at a press conference. “We have to analyse this to identify how to position the sponsons that will be fitted to the ship’s port side. Over the next few days, engineers will work to make it possible to start this phase of the operation.”
Following official permission from Italian authorities, divers and engineers will stabilise the ship to ensure it can withstand the winter season in its current condition, before welding additional sponsons to the ship’s starboard side, which has been submerged and inaccessible for twenty months.
Operations to recover the bodies of two missing passengers and the contents of the safes in each passenger cabin will also begin once officials secure permission to enter the vessel.
“As we have always said, we believe that the operation will be concluded when the ship leaves Giglio Island,” said Gabrielli. “The ship is not totally safe as it remains in the sea, which carries inherent and incremental risks due to the ship’s weight, potential wave loads and weather conditions, but all the possible remediation actions will be implemented to ensure safety.”
Once the salvage operations are complete and the vessel is floated to a port, Costa and Carnival will restore the reef, seabed and surrounding environment to its original condition prior to the accident. They will also monitor the ecosystem for several years.
“Our position is very clear, this is a beautiful island with a protected environment, so our commitment is to give the environment back to the island as it was before the accident,” said Michael Thamm, CEO of Costa Cruises. “The removal and salvage of large ships has taken place before, but this project was different due to the ship’s unique shape and size, and the fact we had to preserve the wreck while protecting this very special environment. This meant we couldn’t risk any chance of the ship breaking, dropping or polluting, which made the operation unusual and difficult.”