Built in 2006, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia was one of the ten largest ships in the world. And on January 13, 2012, Costa Concordia hit a rock reef, becoming the world's largest cruise ship to wreck.
The disaster occurred at ten in the evening local time near the Italian village of Giglio Porto, Taskana district. Most of the passengers on the liner were having dinner at a restaurant while the ship hit the reef and began to sink. It would seem that the conditions for the rescue operation are favorable, but the cruise ship's crew behaved extremely unprofessionally. Fifteen minutes after the collision, the Costa Concordia captain announced that the ship was experiencing minor problems with the generator. Half an hour later, he repeated the information about the generator malfunction. And only closer to 22, when the list of the ship reached 30 degrees, the signal for passengers to leave the ship was heard. The rescue operation itself began late at night, although the coast guard had previously contacted the liner, asking if help was needed. As a result, 30 people died, and two are still missing.
By the end of the summer, the ship itself was still on the reef. After the completion of work on pumping fuel, it was announced who won the tender for the work on lifting and evacuating the liner. The winner was the American company Titan Salvage. In June, experts began dismantling Costa Concordia. It is planned that the work will take about a year. At the moment, the mast and a huge pool have been dismantled, which was located on the upper deck of the luxurious liner. As the specialists of the company explain, to begin with, their task is to lighten the vessel as much as possible and at the same time make sure that it does not begin to slide to depth. After that, an underwater platform will be built, equipped with pontoons filled with water. It will become the support for the sunken ship, and the pontoons will help give it an upright position. In this form, the ship will be towed to one of the Italian ports.
