Monday 16 September 2013

Storms hit Mexico on opposite coasts; at least 33 dead


Tropical Storm Ingrid and the remnants of Tropical Storm Manuel drenched Mexico's Pacific and Gulf coasts with torrential rains Monday, flooding towns and cities, cutting off highways and setting off deadly landslides in a national emergency that federal authorities said had caused at least 33 deaths.

The governor of the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz announced Monday afternoon that 12 people had been killed when a landslide hit a bus traveling through the town of Altotonga, about 40 miles northwest of the state capital. Gov. Javier Duarte said the death toll could grow as bodies were recovered.

More than 23,000 people have fled their homes in the state due to heavy rains and 9,000 are in emergency shelters.

The heaviest blow Sunday fell on the southern coastal state of Guerrero, where Mexico's government reported 14 confirmed deaths. State officials said people had been killed in landslides, drownings in a swollen river and a truck crash on a rain-slickened mountain highway.

Mexico's federal Civil Protection coordinator, Luis Felipe Puente, told reporters late Sunday that stormy weather from one or both of the two systems also caused three deaths in Hidalgo, three in Puebla and one in Oaxaca.

Getting hit by a tropical storm and a hurricane at the same time "is completely atypical" for Mexico, Juan Manuel Caballero, coordinator of the country's National Weather Service, said at a news conference with Puente.

Authorities in the Gulf states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz evacuated more than 7,000 people from low-lying areas as the hurricane closed in, and the prospect of severe weather prompted some communities to cancel Independence Day celebrations planned for Sunday and Monday.

Manuel came ashore as a tropical storm Sunday afternoon near the Pacific port of Manzanillo, but quickly began losing strength and was downgraded to a tropical depression late Sunday, although officials warned its rains could still cause flash floods and mudslides. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the system dissipated early Monday.

The rains caused some rivers to overflow in Guerrero, damaging hundreds of homes and disrupting communications for several hours.

Early Monday, Manuel's remnants had maximum sustained winds of about 30 mph (45 kph) and was moving to the northwest at 8 mph (13 kph). It was about 5 miles (10 kilometers) west of Puerto Vallarta.

Manuel was expected to dump up to 15 inches of rain over parts of Guerrero and Michoacan states, with maximums of 25 inches possible in some isolated areas. Rains of 5 to 10 inches were possible in the states of Colima, Jalisco and Nayarit, with possible maximums of 20 inches in some places. Authorities said the rains presented a dangerous threat in mountains, where flash floods and mudslides were possible.

Ingrid also was expected to bring very heavy rains. It had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph) early Monday and was centered about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the coastal town of La Pesca in the border state of Tamaulipas. It was moving west-northwest at 8 mph (13 kph). A tropical storm warning was in effect from La Cruz to Rio San Fernando.

More than 1,000 homes in Veracruz state had been affected by the storm to varying degrees, and 20 highways and 12 bridges were damaged, the state's civil protection authority said. A bridge collapsed near the northern Veracruz city of Misantla on Friday, cutting off the area from the state capital, Xalapa.

Thirteen people died in the state this month when a landslide buried their homes in heavy rains spawned by Tropical Depression Fernand.

Monday 16 September 2013

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Big-storms-hit-Mexico-on-opposite-coasts-33-dead-4817865.php

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Robot subs search for Concordia bodies


Workers have begun trying to right the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship off the Italian island of Giglio, in the biggest salvage operation of its kind.

The 290-metre ship has lain on its side since it foundered off the Tuscan coast on the night of January 13, 2012 in a tragedy that claimed 32 lives.

The unprecedented operation, which was delayed by several hours by overnight storms, began this morning (local time) after a maritime exclusion zone was established around the site.

Relatives hope to find the bodies of the final two missing victims of the shipwreck during the high-risk operation to right the capsized cruise liner.

Two bodies - that of an Italian mother celebrating her 50th birthday and an Indian waiter - are trapped and have yet to be recovered.

"They are probably in a lifeboat that was sunk when the ship capsized," said Alessandro Centurioni, the environmental commissioner in Giglio, who has helped to plan the salvage operation. "I think they will be just bones after a year and a half in the sea."

The righting of the 114,500-tonne ship, more than double the weight of the Titanic, will be the largest-ever salvage of a passenger vessel. Fifty-six cables weighing 26 tonnes each will haul it off the rocks and rotate it 65 degrees to upright in a method called "parbuckling". The riskiest part of the 10 to 12-hour operation will come in the early hours, when the maximum force - up to 7,000 tonnes per cable - will be applied.

Five robotic submarines will be standing by to look for the bodies.

The ship is full of rotting food and experts say that it could release a foul smell. An inventory of the provisions included 8,200kg of beef, 10,800 eggs and 10 bottles of holy wine for Mass.

"It's possible that when the boat is righted, there could be a release of gas that was trapped inside [the fridges]," Mr Centurioni said.

Elio Vincenzo, the husband of the missing woman, Maria Grazia Trecarichi, was due to arrive in the island last night. "I'm thinking only of my wife. These have been very hard months without Maria Grazia, but I hope with the rotation they will find her underneath," he said. "I'm counting on it."

Mr Vincenzo said that his wife did not get on the same lifeboat as his daughter, who was also onboard but survived, because she was cold and had gone below deck to fetch a jacket.

Kevin Rebello, the brother of Russel Rebello, 33, the lost Indian waiter, is expected to arrive in Giglio to follow the search on Tuesday, once the rotation is complete.

Father Lorenzo Pasquotti, the local Catholic priest, said: "We are waiting and waiting - with hope. Some people are afraid, but the people of the salvage consortium are working hard. If it goes bad, it will be because of the sea, not them."

Monday 16 September 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/costa-concordia-salvage-operation-begins/story-e6frg6so-1226719925952

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Costa Concordia underwater: What’s inside of wrecked cruise ship?


The nautical blue paint spelling out “Costa Concordia” has almost all bubbled and chipped off the bow of the once luxurious cruise liner after 20 months under salt water off the Italian island of Giglio.

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.

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.

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.

Monday 16 September 2013

http://fox2now.com/2013/09/15/costa-concordia-underwater-whats-inside-of-wrecked-cruise-ship/

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