Costa Concordia underwater
Editor's note: Barbie Latza Nadeau
is the Rome bureau chief for Newsweek Daily Beast and a contributor to
CNN. She is working on a novel based on the Costa Concordia disaster.
One can get glimpse of
just what it's like in and under the Concordia by the vast array of
mesmerizing underwater videos released by Italy's coast guard and the
Titan Micoperi salvage team tasked with removing the rusting hulk.
The seabed is still
littered with sun deck chairs that floated from the ship's balconies and
upper deck when it finally came to a rest in January 2012. Fish swim
around the sunbed legs and seaweed has grown through some of the mesh
seating. The beds are spread out in a surreal scene that looks like a
set from an underwater science fiction film. Shoes, mattresses, dinner
plates and thousands of pieces of cutlery shimmer in the divers' lights
on a bed of sea grass.
Divers have not been deep
inside the massive ship for nearly a year. The salvage divers only work
on the outside of the ship and do not have authority to enter the
vessel, with the exception of a work area they have created with a false
floor on the upper port side deck, unless accompanied by Coast Guard
divers.
Photos: The Costa Concordia disaster
Search and rescue inside Costa Concordia
Raising the Costa Concordia
Incredible drone video of Costa Concordia
Not only is the Concordia
still chock full of passengers' possessions the Costa Cruises company
hopes to return, but the ship is still considered a crime scene.
Thirty-two people died in the accident and the ship's erstwhile captain,
Francesco Schettino, is facing charges of multiple manslaughter and
causing the shipwreck after piloting the 290-meter ship into the rocks
on Giglio last year.
The last divers to comb
through the Concordia's sunken bowels were there to search in vain for
the last two victims, still believed to be trapped somewhere under the
ship or buried in a watery grave at the bottom of the hollow hull. The
salvage crew believe they know about where the bodies might be found,
but there is no guarantee until the ship is lifted whether they will be
found at all.
In the weeks after the
accident, the divers called the inside of the ship a "toxic stew" of
spilled oil, rotting food and floating tableware. There were five
massive restaurants on the ship -- each one in operation when the ship
crashed at 9:42 p.m. on January 13, 2013, spilling tables of buffet food
into the water. More than a dozen kitchens and freezers had enough food
to feed the 4,200 passengers and crew for a week, plus extra supplies
that all cruise ships carry in case of emergencies and delays. Many of
the freezers burst and their contents were gobbled up by sea life and
the colony of sea gulls that has multiplied on the island since the
disaster.
Fishermen off Giglio say
that the fish have changed, too. They are much larger and harder to
catch after gorging on the ship's offerings. The freezers that have not
burst under the water pressure are still locked with their rotting
thawed contents sealed inside. Fridges too, filled with milk, cheese,
eggs and vegetables, have been closed tight since the disaster. One has
to only imagine leaving a home freezer -- a fraction of the size of the
industrial freezers used by cruise ships -- unplugged for 20 months to
get an idea of the type of rancid mess trapped inside.
Rodolfo Raiteri, head of
the Coast Guard dive team, told CNN that his divers had to confront an
array of deep-sea threats, from floating knives to lethal bed sheets and
flowing curtains that could have easily become entangled in the divers'
safety cords. There were also floating chairs and large chunks of
marble and crystal chandeliers that constantly detached and fell from
the sideways ship's ceilings every time the ship creaked and shifted as
it settled onto two underwater rocky mountain peaks. All that debris,
along with thousands of dinner plates, can be seen stacked against the
underwater windows in some of the salvage video.
The ship has compressed
three full meters in the 20 months since it crashed, and each time it
groans and twists, windows break as their frames adjust and
once-attached items are lodged free. On cruise ships, dining room tables
are all affixed to the floors to keep passengers from chasing sliding
tables in rough seas. Raiteri described the bizarre scene his divers
faced swimming among the sideways tables, sometimes encountering plates
of food and floating champagne bottles in their search for victims.
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Senior cabin service
director Manrico Giampedroni, one of the last survivors to be pulled out
of the wreckage alive, became trapped half submerged in the ship's
dining room when his leg got caught among fallen furniture. He survived
for 36 hours on floating food and stayed awake by drinking caffeinated
beverages until rescuers found him. If he had fallen asleep, he would
have drowned. Incidentally, Giampedroni was later convicted of
involuntary manslaughter in a plea bargain for his role in the deaths
for not being at his duty station to help evacuate the ship.
In addition to the
general rule of thumb that you don't blow up ships where there are still
unrecovered victims, one of the main reasons the Concordia is being
refloated rather than blown up or dismantled on site is because of the
toxins and personal effects still trapped in the ship's 1,500
staterooms. The ship's engines are still thick with lubricants and the
kitchens are still filled with cooking oils and non-soluble materials
that would pollute the sea.
Giglio, which lies
within the Pelagos Sanctuary, the largest protected marine wildlife park
in the Mediterranean, is flush with exotic sea life and coral reefs.
The putrid stew inside the ship's 17 deck-structure will eventually have
to be purified or pumped out before the ship is refloated sometime next
year, and the personal effects are another matter.
All that was in the
Concordia the moment it wrecked is presumably still there, save the
ship's bell, which mysteriously disappeared two months after the wreck
based on surveillance video taken by authorized divers. An investigation
into who could have stolen the bell has caused some concern that other
items, especially high price items from the ship's gift shops, could
have also been pilfered. Everything inside the ship is expected to be
recovered and returned to its original owners, no matter how
water-logged it may be, but that could be months from now when the ship
is eventually towed and dry docked for dismantling.
Each of the cabins has a
locked safe, presumably still filled with passengers' valuables
including cash and jewelry. There are also countless cameras, laptops,
iPads and cellphones that passengers left behind, not to mention
luggage. The ship had only been at sail for three hours, so many
passengers likely didn't take time to unpack, but instead headed to the
nearest dining room or bar to relax as the ship set sail. One suitcase
floated to the nearby island of Elba and its soggy contents were
delivered to the owner nine months after the disaster. Many more
suitcases have been spotted by divers at the bottom of the sea.
Nick Sloane, the head of
the salvage operation for Titan Micoperi, the joint American-Italian
venture to rescue the Concordia,, says that if explosives were used, the
ship's smaller contents would become dangerous projectiles. "Mattresses
and passports would scatter the sea," he says. But the real danger
would be flying cutlery, cooking knives, bottles and broken glass.
If the "parbuckling"
goes well and the giant 114,000-ton vessel is tipped upright sometime in
the next week, much more than the 65 percent of the ship that is under
water now will be submerged. The platforms that will provide a base on
which the Concordia will rest are some 30 meters below the sea level,
meaning many of the staterooms that were dry until now will sink
underwater. Some of the toxic water will be displaced and pushed out of
the upper cabins. Some freezers that are still sealed could burst under
new water pressure. And almost every window on the ship's outer cabins
is expected to break as the ship's frame twists.
Sloane says the noise
will be deafening as metal twists and windows pop. The ship has been
rigged with cameras and microphones to help the salvage crew monitor the
ship's structure as it is lifted. As Sloane says, ships this size were
never meant to lie on their sides, and they are not built to be lifted.
The salvage team says they will be able to contain any spillage of
toxins with oil booms now in place around the work site. The broken
glass and new debris will join what is already at the bottom of the sea.
There will never be the
scale of environmental disaster that was already averted by removing the
ship's 2,400 tons of fuel shortly after the ship crashed, but there are
still major risks involved with salvaging the Concordia. If the
parbuckling fails and the ship breaks apart as it is rotated, the rotten
contents -- moldy mattresses, passports, toxic stew and all -- will
spill into the once-pristine sea. And even if it succeeds, this part of
the Mediterranean will never be quite the same again
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