On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia ran aground and partially sank off the western coast of Italy near the shores of Isola del Giglio. Of the 4,200 passengers and crew, at least eleven people were killed, including ten passengers and one crew member, and 23 are still missing. The ship is currently capsized off the coast and at high risk of falling into deeper waters and sinking. The fucktard captain responsible for this disaster is currently under house arrest and will almost certainly be spending the rest of his life in prison (to give you an idea of what the environment was like on the captain’s deck at the time of the incident, investigators just discovered there was a female dancer present when the crash occurred). It is next to impossible for any of the 23 people to be found alive, but divers are frantically searching the labyrinthian underwater maze of rooms to recover as many of the bodies as possible. The ship, however, is moving — just this morning sensors are indicating the ship is budging at a rate of 7mm per hour (roughly 1/4″). It only takes a 1mm change to send something as big as the Costa Concordia hurdling into an even more precarious position, so divers have been quickly evacuated on numerous occasions over the past several days whenever the ship has shown signs of sudden shifting. At nearly 1,000-feet long, 123-feet across and weighing in at 112,000 tons, the ship is 118-feet longer than RMS Titanic, and getting the Costa Concordia unstuck from the coastline of Italy’s Giglio island will be one of the biggest removal jobs in maritime history. The biggest question of all is one that will take weeks to answer: will the ship be saved or will it be scrapped? Either way it’s going to be an enormous job. CBS This Morning ran a brilliant piece yesterday on the two possible fates of the Costa Concordia, and it’s absolutely fascinating. It blows my mind that a wreck of this size and state could be saved. Watch the report below to find out how they’re going to do it.
