After a collision with a reef near Giglio Island, Italy; in January 2012, the luxury cruise ship, Costa Concordia, has been up righted, an engineering miracle…
GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy — Engineers declared success on Tuesday as the Costa Concordia cruise ship was pulled completely upright during an unprecedented, 19-hour operation to wrench it from its side where it capsized last year off Tuscany.
According to weather.com meteorologist Alan Raymond, the wenching process was delayed several hours due to choppy seas and frequent lightning strikes, caused by storms over Giglio Island.
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.
The Concordia’s submerged side suffered significant damage during the 20 months it bore the weight of the Concordia on the jagged reef, and the daylong operation to right it stressed that flank as well. Exterior balconies were mangled and entire sections looked warped, though officials said the damage probably looks worse than it really is.
Not an easy task…
Shortly after 4 a.m., a foghorn wailed on 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…
Parbuckling is a standard operation to right capsized ships. But never before had it been used on such a huge cruise liner.
The ship is expected to be floated away from Giglio in the spring and turned into scrap.
Here’s a neat time lapse of the parbuckling…
http://youtu.be/_91A9FzxQ78
