Engineers working on the Sewol ferry will try moving it onshore Thursday as scheduled, although the retrieved wreck weighs more than expected, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said Wednesday.
The salvaged ship, loaded on a semisubmersible transport facility, is currently at Mokpo Port, waiting to be transferred to a dry dock for a search of its interior.
Nine passengers are still missing from when it sank three years ago, which was recorded as the nation’s worst peacetime maritime disaster with a death toll of 295.
“As scheduled, we will try loading Sewol onto module transporters (to move it onshore) on April 6,” Lee Cheol-jo, a ministry official overseeing the salvage and search operation told reporters.
The team has a plan B in case Sewol’s heavier than expected weight becomes a problem: it will mobilize an additional 336 units with a higher load capacity of up to 60 tons per axle.
Currently, some 480 units of 40-tonnage trailers are deployed to make a loading platform for Sewol.
The wreck, originally an 8,000-8,500-ton vessel, is estimated to weigh about 14,500 tons, with water, stones and sand inside.
The ministry plans to move the wreck into the dry dock area by Friday night, when the current neap tides are expected to end.
A total of 101 objects -- many of them believed to be belongings of the victims -- have been discovered since the ship’s retrieval, along with 20 pieces of bone fragments, which turned out to be from animals.
By Lee Sun-young ()
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
