Giglio Island, January 20: Italian rescuers were forced to suspend operations on the stricken Costa Concordia luxury liner on Friday a week after a Mediterranean tragedy in which up to 32 people are feared to have died.
“Rescue workers were on the ship during the night. When it moved, the search was immediately suspended,” Filippo Marini, a coastguard spokesperson, told reporters at the scene of the disaster on Giglio Island off the Tuscan coast.
“Now there is a meeting between emergency services to decide how to proceed,” he said, adding that one of the proposals at the meeting was to attach the ship to the mainland using cables to prevent it moving again.
Officials are afraid the giant 17-deck ship could slip off a rocky ledge on which it is resting on its side and sink entirely.
Choppy seas have increased this concern further, with coastguard spokesperson Cosimo Nicastro saying: “The conditions are dangerous.”
As the weather deteriorated on Thursday, emergency crews attached rope ladders to the exposed side of the ship to ease access to the vessel.
Oil spill fears
The forecast for later on Friday was for waves of up to 1.5m, which would make access to the boat by dinghy more dangerous.
Environmentalists and local residents of this pristine nature reserve and marine sanctuary are afraid that there could be a spill from the ship’s tanks filled with 2 380 tons of heavy fuel oil and 200 tons of diesel.
Dutch company Smit Salvage is ready to pump out the fuel in what is known as a “hot-tapping” operation but officials say the search on the ship would have to be suspended for them to do so as it could affect the vessel’s stability.
“We’re ready to begin the operation. We were ready yesterday but we’re still waiting for the green light from the authorities. Now we’re just fine-tuning the instruments,” Smit representative on the island Rene Robben said.
Eleven people have been confirmed dead in the tragedy including four French nationals, one Italian and one Spaniard among the passengers and two crew members – a Peruvian waiter and a Hungarian man, who was a violinist on board.
—Agencies