Cruise ship sinking: Costa Concordia removal will take up to ten months

THE cruise ship that capsized off Italy’s coast could take ten months to remove, officials said last night, as rough seas off the Tuscan coast forced the suspension of recovery operations.

The start of operations to remove 500,000 gallons of fuel and the search for people still missing were called off after it was found that the Costa Concordia had moved four centimetres over six hours.

A 17th body, identified as Peruvian crew member Erika Soria Molina, was found on Saturday. Sixteen crew and passengers remain listed as missing

Officials have virtually ruled out finding anyone alive on the Costa Concordia, but were reluctant to give a final death toll for the 13 January disaster. More than 4,200 people were on board.

“Our first goal was to find people alive,” Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the operation, told a daily briefing. “Now we have a single, big goal, and that is that this does not translate into an environmental disaster.”

University of Florence professor Riccardo Fanti said the ship’s movements could either be caused by the ship settling on its own weight, slipping deeper into the seabed or both. He also could not rule out the ship’s sliding along the seabed.

Mr Gabrielli said the body of a man recovered from the ship remained unidentified, despite efforts to obtain DNA samples from all of the missing. The ship’s owners have said that there are strict procedures that would preclude the presence of any unregistered passengers.

Experts have said it would take 28 days to remove fuel from 15 tanks accounting for more than 80 per cent of all fuel on board the ship. The next job would be to target the engine room, which contains nearly 350 cubic metres of diesel, fuel and other lubricants.

Only once the fuel is removed can work begin on removing the ship, which would take between seven to ten months. depending on the method chosen.