By
Rebecca Gibson |
Costa Cruises’ Costa Concordia arrived in the port of Genoa Prà-Voltri on Sunday 27 July.
Concordia, which partially capsized off the coast of Giglio Island in Italy on 13 January 2012 killing 32 people, was initially raised to a vertical position during a 19-hour parbuckling operation on 17 September 2013. The vessel was then left to rest on an artificial seabed in Giglio to allow the Titan-Micoperi team to carry out stabilisation work in October 2013. Refloating operations began on 14 July and Concordia started her final voyage to the Italian port of Genoa at 11am local time on 23 July.
Accompanied by a 14-ship flotilla, which included two towing tugs and a range of environmental monitoring boats, Concordia travelled to Genoa speeds of around 1-2 knots.
Prior to her arrival in the Prà-Voltri port, harbour pilots boarded Concordia and the two tugboats that towed Concordia to Genoa – Blizzard and Resolve Earl – were disconnected and replaced with a fleet of eight harbour tugs. The operation started at 5am local time on Sunday.
Michael Thamm, Costa’s CEO, boarded Concordia to meet with Nick Sloane and the salvage team. He said: “I wanted to personally thank Nick Sloane and the whole team for the extraordinary commitment they have always demonstrated throughout the project and wish them good work at the beginning of an important day of complex mooring operations.”
At 3.40pm, Costa signed a notarial deed transferring ownership of Concordia to the Saipem/San Giorgio del Porto consortium, which will dismantle and recycle the ship at Genoa’s Voltri port in accordance with the requirements outlined by Italy’s Ministry of Environment and other authorities.
The four-phase project, which is expected to take around 22 months to complete, has no fixed deadlines. During phase one of the project, the team will strip the interior furnishings and fittings from the decks above water, enabling the ship to be transferred from the Voltri Breakwater to the Molo Ex Superbacino dock in preparation for phase two. At this stage, the port will dismantle the structures of decks 14 to 2. In phase three, the sponsons will be removed and the food storerooms and cold storage rooms on Deck 0 will be cleaned.
Finally, in phase four the wreck will be completely disassembled in a segregated area of Dry Dock 4. Other operations will include removing any interior fittings, cleaning various areas and demolishing remaining structures. This phase will conclude with the appropriate handling, disposal and recycling of the discarded materials.
The Concordia wreck removal project is considered as the biggest salvage ever attempted on a ship of her size, while Costa estimates that the operation to remove the wreck from the reef in Giglio and tow her for scrapping will cost a total of €1.5 billion.
Now that Concordia is in port, authorities will search her decks for the body of the final missing victim, Russel Rebello, an Indian waiter who worked onboard the ship.