Tag Archives: isle of Giglio

Concordia captain to return to wreck

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By Phil Davies 

Concordia captain to return to wreckThe captain of the doomed Costa Concordia is due to return to the wreck today (Thursday).

Judges in the city of Grosseto agreed to a request by lawyers for Francesco Schettino, who demanded that he takes part in a survey of the ship.

The request came as a team of lawyers and experts were due to inspect an emergency power unit on the 11th deck of the Concordia, which allegedly did not work on the night of the shipwreck in January 2012.

It will be his first time back on the ship since it hit rocks off the island of Giglio in January 2012 and capsized, killing 32 people.

The visit is part of an investigation at Schettino’s trial, where he is accused of manslaughter and abandoning ship. He denies the charges. If found guilty he could face up to 20 years in prison.

Schettino is due to board along with inspectors, but will not be allowed to interfere with their investigation. He would be allowed onto the ship “as a defendant, not a consultant”, said Judge Giovanni Puliatti.

The captain has been accused of leaving the vessel before all 4,229 people on board had been evacuated. But he denies abandoning the ship after it hit a reef near the island.

He maintains he managed to steer the stricken vessel closer to shore so it did not sink in deep water where hundreds might have drowned.

An Italian court convicted five others of manslaughter last July.

They had all successfully entered plea bargains, while Schettino’s request for a plea bargain was denied by the prosecution.

Concordia was set upright in an unprecedented salvage operation known as parbuckling in September.

Diver working on Costa Concordia dies in accident

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Diver working on Costa Concordia dies in accident

A diver is reported to have died while working on the shipwrecked Costa Concordia after apparently gashing his leg on an underwater metal sheet.

Italy’s civil protection agency, which is leading the removal of the Concordia from the Tuscan coast, said the diver was Spanish.

Tuscany’s La Nazione newspaper said the diver had been working on preparations to attach huge tanks on to sides of the Concordia, to float the ship off its false seabed and tow it to a port for eventual dismantling.

The newspaper reported he gashed his leg on an underwater metal sheet and was then unable to get free.

It said he bled heavily before a diver colleague was able to bring him to the surface. He was reportedly conscious upon surfacing but later died, according to Sky News.

He is the first diver to die in the line of work on salvaging the Concordia ever since it hit a reef off the island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 passengers and crew.

The Concordia was righted in preparation for removal during a 19-hour engineering feat last autumn, in which a system of pulleys wrenched 115,000-ton cruise ship from its side to vertical.

Costa Concordia refloating scheduled to happen in June

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By Tom Stieghorst

Concordia wreckItalian authorities and Costa Cruises executives held a briefing in Italy updating the progress on refloating the Costa Concordia.

The update comes a few days before the second anniversary of the partial sinking of the Costa ship.

Engineers pulled the Concordia upright last fall and are preparing to refloat the ship before towing it to port to be scrapped.

Project managers are targeting June to move the wreck from Giglio Island to an as-yet-unknown destination. Prior to that, they will attach another 19 sponsons to the hull.

The plan calls for sponsons to be fastened to the ship in April. Then water will be pumped out of the tank-like sponsons, providing buoyancy to raise the ship off its fabricated platform about 30 meters below the surface to a depth of about 18.5 meters.

A total of 2042.5 cubic meters of fuel and 240 cubic meters of sewage were removed from the ship last March, along with 240 tons of material from the seabed, according to the project briefing materials.

Authorities initially contacted 30 salvage companies and are in the process of picking one. The field has been winnowed to companies from Italy, France, Norway, the U.K. and Turkey, with final selection expected in early March.

The project has a $30 million option to retain the Dockwise Vanguard, the world’s largest semi-submersible vessel, as an alternative for transporting Concordia.

About 60% of the direct spending on the recovery (about 261 million euros) has benefited Italy, with another 21% of the benefits flowing to the U.S., 12% to the U.K., 3.8% to the Netherlands and 2.6% to Germany, the project said.

It estimated the overall impact on Italy’s GDP at 540 million euros.