GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy (AP) ― Engineers declared success on Tuesday as the Costa Concordia cruise ship was pulled completely upright during a complicated, 19-hour operation to wrench it from its side where it capsized last year off Tuscany, an unprecedented feat that sets the stage for it to be towed away next year.
The submerged side of the Concordia suffered significant damage during 20 months bearing the weight of the ship and the operation to right it, officials said. That damage must be repaired to stabilize the ship so it can be towed and turned into scrap.
Shortly after 4 a.m., a foghorn wailed off Giglio Island and the head of Italy’s Civil Protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, announced that the ship had reached vertical and that the operation to rotate it ― known in nautical terms as parbuckling ― was complete.
“We completed the parbuckling operation a few minutes ago the way we thought it would happen and the way we hoped it would happen,” said Franco Porcellacchia, project manager for the Concordia’s owner, Costa Crociere SpA.
“A perfect operation, I must say,” with no environmental spill detected so far, he said.
Applause rang out among firefighters in the tent where the project engineers made the announcement. An hour later, Nick Sloane, the South African chief salvage master, received a hero’s welcome as he came ashore from the barge that had served as the floating command control room for the operation.
“Brilliant! Perfetto,” Sloane said, using some of the Italian he has learned over the past year on Giglio preparing for the operation. “It was a struggle, a bit of a roller coaster. But for the whole team it was fantastic.”
The Concordia slammed into a reef off Giglio Island on Jan. 13, 2012, after the captain brought it too close to shore. The cruise ship drifted, listed and capsized just off the island’s port, killing 32 people. Two bodies were never recovered.
The operation to right it had been expected to take no more than 12 hours, but dragged on after some initial delays and maintenance on the vast system of steel cables, pulleys and counterweights that were used to roll the 115,000-ton, half-submerged carcass of steel upright. The final phase of the rotation went remarkably fast as gravity began to kick in and pull the ship toward its normal vertical position.
Parbuckling is a standard operation to right capsized ships. But never before had it been used on such a huge cruise liner.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
