ROME (AP) — A diver died Saturday while working on the
shipwrecked Costa Concordia, apparently gashing his leg on an underwater
metal sheet while preparing the wreck for removal, officials and news
reports said.
Italy’s civil protection agency, which is overseeing
the removal of the Concordia from Tuscany’s coast, said the diver
hailed from Spain.
Tuscany’s La Nazione newspaper said the diver
had been working on preparations to affix huge tanks onto sides of the
Concordia to float the ship off its false seabed and tow it to a port
for eventual dismantling. It said he apparently gashed his leg on an
underwater metal sheet and was then unable to get free, bleeding
profusely before a diver colleague was able to bring him to the surface.
The report said he was conscious upon surfacing but later died.
The
diver, who wasn’t identified by authorities, is the first to die in the
line of work on salvaging the Concordia ever since it slammed into a
reef off Giglio island on Jan. 13, 2012, killing 32 passengers and crew.
A diver died last year, but the causes were reportedly unrelated to the
work.
The Concordia was righted in preparation for removal during
a remarkable, 19-hour engineering feat last fall in which a system of
pulleys wrenched the 300-meter-long (1,000-foot-long), 115,000-ton
cruise ship from its side to vertical. A dozen giant tanks were affixed
to its exposed port side and filled with water to help pull the ship
upright.
The current project that the diver was working on was to
prepare the starboard side, which had been underwater until the ship was
righted, to hold a similar number of tanks.
The tanks will be
emptied of water and used to literally float the wreck off the seabed,
so it can be towed away from Giglio, brought to a port and taken apart
for scrap. Officials say they hope to have it removed by June.
The
600 million euro ($810 million) removal project, which has already run
nearly twice its original cost estimates, is the most ambitious ever
attempted for a ship the size of the Concordia.
In a statement,
the head of the civil protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, expressed
condolences for the death and recalled the dedication of people working
on the wreckage, saying they had worked "for two years without a break,
in difficult conditions not without risks, to achieve the common goal of
removing the Concordia from Giglio."
The ship’s captain is
currently on trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and leaving the
ship before all passengers were evacuated. Prosecutors have accused him
of taking the ship off course in a stunt to bring it closer to Giglio.
Capt. Francesco Schettino has said he saved lives by steering the ship
to shallow waters after it ran aground on a reef that wasn’t on his
nautical charts.
On Friday, Italy’s highest court let stand plea bargains reached by five other Costa employees.
Costa is a unit of Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise line.
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