Salvage teams prepare to pump Concordia’s fuel

A barge carrying a crane and other equipment hitched itself to the toppled Costa Concordia, signalling the start of preliminary operations to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the grounded cruise ship before it leaks into the pristine Tuscan sea.

Actual pumping of the oil isn’t expected to begin until Saturday, but teams from the Dutch shipwreck salvage firm Smit were working on the bow of the Concordia and divers made underwater inspections to identify the precise locations of the fuel tanks.

They were at work on the now-hitched Meloria barge as divers who blasted through a submerged section of the third-floor deck located another body from the wreckage, bringing the death toll to 16.

The Concordia ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio on January 13 after the captain veered from his approved course and gashed the ship’s hull on a reef, forcing the panicked evacuation of 4,200 passengers and crew.

The 16 bodies found so far include the one located on the third-floor deck yesterday. Seven of the badly decomposed bodies are unidentified and are presumed to be among some of the 17 passengers and crew still missing.

Giglio and its waters are part of a protected seven-island marine park and known for its clear waters and porpoises, dolphins and whales.

Officials have identified an initial six fuel tanks that will be drilled into, tapped and outfitted with hoses to vacuum out the oil from the Costa Concordia.

Franco Gabrielli, head of the national civil protection agency, said that once those initial six tanks are emptied, 50% of the fuel aboard the ship will have been extracted.

The pumping will go on 24 hours a day, barring rough seas or technical glitches, he said, noting that these six tanks are relatively easy to access.

“At this stage we don’t see a big risk in an oil spill, but if weather deteriorates nobody can tell what the vessel will do,” said Bart Huizing, head of operations at Smit.

The disaster prompted Unesco, the UN cultural organisation, to ask the Italian government to restrict access of large cruise ships to Venice, which is a Unesco world heritage site. Unesco said the liners cause tides that erode building foundations, pollute the waterways and are eyesores.

Divers, meanwhile, continued blasting holes inside the steel-hulled ship to ease access for crews searching for the missing.

The search and rescue operation will continue in tandem with the fuel removal operation.

Smit officials say the first thing divers will do is drill holes into the tanks and attach valves onto them. The sludge-like oil will then be heated and hoses attached to the valves to suck out the oil as seawater is pumped into displace it.

“It’s never a routine, there is always a risk, but we’ve done this before, so at this moment we don’t see any problems,” Huizing said.