Removal of Costa Concordia to Begin

I missed this a couple of weeks ago. From the New York Times:

The companies, Titan Salvage, which is based in Florida, and Micoperi, an Italian underwater construction and offshore contractor, plan to lift the half-submerged vessel with pullers mounted on a platform and a subsea platform to roll it on, using water-filled caissons to stabilize it, and finally tow it to a yet unidentified Italian port. There, it will be demolished.

. . .

The 951-foot-long Costa Concordia is estimated to weigh 54,000 tons, 6,000 of which are the water and debris that have been cramming its 17 decks for four months. Raising such a tremendous weight from its right side, now deformed by the granite rocks underneath, has to be an inch-by-inch movement, experts said. Just rolling it onto the platform will take a few days, the company said.

�It would have been easier to cut it up in sections, but it�d have produced a tremendous amount of debris,� said Joseph Farrell Jr., chief executive of Resolve Marine Group, based in the United States, which had also bid to salvage the Costa Concordia. �Authorities wanted to have it removed in one hunk.�

Salvagers are set to stabilize the wreck by the end of August and then start building the underwater platform to help rotate the vessel. According to the companies� schedule, the ship will be rotated at the beginning of December and floated one month later.

Open thread.

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posted by rdbrewer at 03:07 PM

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