GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy: Italy’s Costa Concordia cruise ship began emerging from its watery grave on Monday in an unprecedented salvage on a stunning island that could create a toxic waste spill.
The 290-metre (951-foot) could be seen slowly turning upright from the sideways position it has been in since foundering last year in a tragedy that claimed 32 lives.
The part of the 114,500-ton vessel that was underwater was rusty, contrasting with the white of the exposed side, as the biggest ever salvage of a passenger ship got underway.
“The ship has lifted off the rocks,” said Sergio Girotto, an engineer for the joint Italian-US salvage operation, which has cost 600 million euros ($800 million) so far.
“The first hours were the most uncertain because we did not know how stuck the ship was,” he said, although he pointed out there were “major deformations” in the hull.
Girotto estimated that the shift in the angle of the ship had so far been only around 3.0 degrees closer to the vertical and varied between different parts of the ship.
The salvage of the Costa Concordia — which is longer and more than twice as heavy as the Titanic — was delayed by several hours because of storms on the island of Giglio.
It is expected to be completed at around 1900 GMT.
Salvage coordinators have played down environmentalist fears of thousands of tons of toxic waste pouring into the sea, saying they are ready to clean up any spill.
“The concentrations will be limited. There is no contamination problem,” said Giandomenico Ardizzone, a marine biology professor working on the project.
The man giving the orders from a control room on a barge next to the Costa Concordia is Nick Sloane, a South African salvage master with years of experience on devastating giant shipwrecks around the world.
Islanders whose lives have been turned upside-down by the wreck said they were relieved that the time when the ship will finally be removed was drawing closer.
They will have months more to wait, as the towing away is not planned until spring of next year after winter storms.
The ship will then be cut up for scrap.
Special prayers were held in a local church on the eve of the operation on Sunday for the victims of the wreck and for the success of the salvage.
“The sooner it happens, the better,” said the parish priest, Father Lorenzo Pasquotti, who opened his church to survivors on the night of the disaster.
Some 400 journalists were accredited for the event and the island’s tiny port has been swarming with officials and curious onlookers since the early morning.
“All the inhabitants are hoping and waiting,” said Giovanna Rum, owner of a shop for maritime clothing.
The Costa Concordia was once a floating pleasure palace filled with entertainment and sporting facilities, including the largest spa centre ever built on a ship.
It struck a group of rocks just off Giglio after veering sharply towards the island in a bravado sail-by allegedly ordered by captain Francesco Schettino.
Dubbed “Captain Coward” and “Italy’s most hated man” for apparently abandoning the ship while passengers were still being evacuated, Schettino is currently on trial.
Four crew members and the head of ship owner Costa Crociere’s crisis unit were handed short prison sentences earlier this year for their roles in the crash.
The ship had 4,229 people from 70 countries on board when it crashed on January 13, 2012 and many people were sitting down for dinner on the first night of their cruise.
It keeled over in shallow waters within sight of Giglio’s tiny port but the order to abandon the vessel came more than an hour later — a fatal delay.
By that time, lifeboats on one side of the ship were virtually unusable because of the tilt and there was panic as people rushed for the remaining ones.
Hundreds were forced to either jump into the water in the darkness and swim ashore or lower themselves along the exposed hull of the ship to waiting boats.
Two bodies — that of an Indian waiter and an Italian passenger — were never recovered from the wreck and are believed to be stuck under the ship.
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