Costa Concordia fuel removal delayed due to weather
By The Associated Press
This article was published January 28, 2012 at 9:23 a.m.
PHOTO BY PIER PAOLO CITO / AP
Experts aboard a sea platform carry oil recovery equipment as they return to the port of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia, visible in background, ran aground, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. Rough seas off Italy's Tuscan coast forced a delay in the planned Saturday start of the operation to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the grounded Costa Concordia, and officials said pumping may now not begin until midweek.
INTERACTIVE
GIGLIO, Italy — Rough seas off Italy’s Tuscan coast forced a delay in the planned Saturday start of the operation to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the grounded Costa Concordia, and officials said pumping may now not begin until midweek.
Recovery operations continued, however, and on Saturday yielded a 17th body: A woman who wasn’t wearing a life jacket was found by divers on the submerged sixth floor deck, civil protection officials said.
Some 16 people remain unaccounted for and are presumed dead. The body discovered Saturday has not yet been identified.
The removal of the fuel aboard the Concordia is a key concern since the seas around Giglio form part of a protected marine sanctuary and are a favorite destination for scuba divers. So far, no leakage has been detected.
Dutch shipwreck salvage firm Smit has been contracted by the Concordia’s owner to remove the fuel. Smit’s divers have made the necessary preparations to begin pumping out fuel from six outer tanks that hold more than half of the 500,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil that are aboard the ship.
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