An environmental cleanup for the ages: the Costa Concordia
From the CBC:
“Engineers declared success today as the Costa Concordia was pulled completely upright during a complicated, 19-hour operation to wrench the cruise ship from its side where it capsized last year off Tuscany. The remarkable project now allows for a renewed search for the two bodies that were never recovered from the 32 dead, and for the ship to eventually be towed away.
“They consider it a major success,” CBC reporter Sasa Petricic said from Giglio Island in Italy. “It was complicated, it was expensive … but they did manage to pull this ship into an upright position, despite the fact it is so heavy, despite the fact that it had been there for 20 months, and despite the fact that it had been basically wrenched into the rocky bottom of the Mediterranean.”
The submerged side of the Concordia suffered significant damage 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 sometime in 2014.”
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