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Environment
Salvaging the Costa Concordia
The Costa Concordia ran aground with about 4,200 people on board on Friday.
More than 20 are still missing but the search for survivors has been halted.
Now, questions are being asked about the potential environmental impact.
The Costa Concordia is a large ship equipped with tanks full of fuel. It is aground off an island in a sea fringed with natural protected areas. Whether the vessel can be saved is uncertain.
Host Marco Werman talks with Mike Lacey of the International Salvage Union in London.
Read the Transcript
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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Rescuers in Italy today suspended efforts to find survivors of the Costa Concordia shipwreck. The half-sunk cruise liner shifted in the water making it too dangerous for divers to continue their search. Eleven deaths are confirmed and more than 20 people remain missing. As time passes, work at the site will inevitably focus more on the wreck itself. Salvage teams have two goals — empty the ship’s fuel tanks before they spill; and then decide whether the damaged liner can be saved. Mike Lacey is Secretary. He says the wreck is in a precarious position.
Mike Lacey: There is deep water off just where the ship is laying, one of the risks has to be if she slips away from where she is then she will go into the deeper water, and perhaps even sink. The prime consideration is always safety.
Werman: Now, speaking of safety, the contract to off load the fuel on the Costa Concordia has just been awarded. Can the salvage operation happen at the same time that the fuel is getting taken off the ship?
Lacey: That will normally depend upon the owners and the Italian authorities who will have to decide whether they are prepared to allow salvage work, traditional salvage work in order to save the ship itself, to be carried out at the same time as the fuel removal. It may be that they will allow for preparatory work to take place, but they may not be prepared to allow any full scale salvage operations to take place until all the fuel has been removed.
Werman: There are still people missing from this accident. Will the salvage workers eventually find them and is that a necessary outcome here?
Lacey: Well, that is a very sad scenario and unfortunately, it does happen in shipping casualties. And obviously, they will show the utmost respect to any bodies they find during the course of the salvage operations. If they are able, for example, to bring the ship into an upright position, it will enable a more detailed search to be carried out, and certainly if they are able to pump out the ship it will enable a detailed search to be carried out. It may be that some of these people who have sadly lost their lives in this situation are not actually inside the ship. They may have got into the water and been swept away. Who knows.
Werman: Do you think the Costa Concordia can be saved?
Lacey: If there is a possibility then for sure the salvers will try to achieve that. If she is too far gone, if she is too badly damaged then it may well be that the cost of repairing the ship will be out of all proportion to her value, and in that case she will become a constructive total loss and she will almost certainly be cut up where she lays.
Werman: Have you ever seen a ship that was pretty badly damaged and you thought no, it’s never gonna be save, but in fact, it was salvaged?
Lacey: Yes, I mean that does happen. They do go aground, they have collisions, they have structural failures, they have fires. This is just part of the shipping scene. And ships do get repaired.
Werman: And what’s your hunch about the Costa Concordia?
Lacey: I personally think that in the situation in which the vessel is at the present time that she will probably be ended up being scrapped. She will probably have to be cut up where she is.
Werman: Mike Lacey, General Secretary of the International Salvage Union, thank you for your time.
Lacey: No problem, thank you.
Werman: For more of our in depth coverage of the Costa Concordia accident, including that startling recording made by Italy’s Coast Guard of a conversation with the ship’s captain, just go to theworld.org.
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