TORONTO – In the aftermath of the Costa Concordia shipwreck, questions arise as to what will happen to the ship itself.
Smit Tak, the Dutch company employed to pump fuel from the ship, declined to comment when contacted by Global News, but Secretary General Mike Lacey of the International Salvage Union (ISU) provided insight on the ship salvaging industry and its protocol.
Lacey told Global News that while the salvage industry success rate is very high, extent of damage and weather conditions play a big role in recovery.
“There will be people working desperately hard at the moment to come up with a plan to salvage the ship, either by possibly uprising it and patching it and poking it out, or alternatively if that’s not feasible, then she may just have to be cut up where she is,” said Lacey.
Scrapping the ship and cutting it into sections would be the last option, and based on previous shipwrecks, could take up to two years depending on factors such as weather.
“All sorts of passenger ships have had problems, collisions, fires, so on and so forth, but this is the biggest one in terms of numbers of people on board…over 4, 000 people. It’s just huge.”
Lacey says the Costa Concordia cost around 450 million Euros to build, and whether or not it’s worth it to salvage the ship will be a question that insurers and owners are looking into.
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Costa Cruise’s parent company, Carnival Cruises, saw its stock price plummet 18 per cent, wiping nearly $5 billion off their balance sheet. For one of their ships to be out of commission will mean approximately $95 million in lost revenue. Insurance analysts say the wreck could be the biggest insured loss in maritime history.
Lacey likens the ship’s situation to an automobile accident.
“If you have an accident with your car, you can say you have it insured for $15, 000. If it’s only worth $10, 000, and if it’s going to cost $12, 000 to repair it, it’s not going to get repaired.”
The cost of salvaging a 290-metre cruise ship will depend on the time and amount of equipment needed as well as the number of people involved. This could easily add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in Lacey’s estimation.
Assuming the ship doesn’t need to be cut up into pieces-rendering it irreparable-it will be returned to the repair yard. At that time, extent of damage is the key to recovery time.
” The part that’s flooded would be a complete write-off probably. The machinery will be damaged because it’s been in sea water. The electronics will be completely damaged because they’ve been submerged,” says Lacey. “On top of that, with the ship being on its side, everything doesn’t stay in place, it all falls down, it breaks, it smashes. There’ll be huge amounts of damage inside the ship.”
In terms of safety concerns involved in use of a repaired ship, Lacey is confident it’s no problem at all. While the fact that a ship has been in a wreck wouldn’t be brought to the attention of new passengers, the vessel would undergo the same tests as a newly built ship.
“She will not be allowed to go out of the repair yard and back into service as a passenger ship unless she is fully in class approved by state authorities, approved by the classification society, approved by insurers, so that everybody is satisfied that she is completely safe. It’s no different from building a ship. You start off with a heap of steel, and you turn it into a ship.”
Lacey referred to an incident involving the Queen Elizabeth II, which hit the bottom of a shallow patch off the coast of New England a few years ago and was repaired and carried on in service.
“You wouldn’t go around saying, this is the former Costa Concordia, it’s now called the Mary-Lou or something. But you know people can find out, it’s not too difficult to find out this information,” he adds.
The International Salvage Union represents 58 salvors worldwide and provides a wider understanding of the industry’s contribution to environmental protection and recovery of property. The ISU looks after the interests of marine salvage companies and provides a voice on their behalf.
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