Update On The Concordia. Will It Be Refloated? More Victims Identified.

jacketwatch · April 17, 2012

Five more victims of the Concordia tragedy have been identified today, according to reports.

MSNBC quoted a statement from the Grosseto prefecture this morning, confirming that five of the bodies recovered from the wreck site last month have been identified. Italian officials named Americans Barbara and Gerald Heil from Minnesota, Christina Matheson Ganz and Norbert Josef Ganz, both Germans, and Giuseppe Girolamo, an Italian citizen and member of the crew. At least 30 people died when the ship capsized, and two are still missing.

A recent ruling by Italy's highest court determined that Francesco Schettino, who was captaining the Costa Concordia when it foundered off the Italian island of Giglio on January 13, will remain under house arrest during a criminal investigation into his actions.

The accident occurred after Schettino deviated from the ship's approved route to "salute" the island's residents. Schettino -- who faces a number of allegations, including manslaughter, abandoning ship, causing a shipwreck and failing to report the accident to the coast guard -- has been under house arrest outside Naples since being taken into custody following the incident.

Meanwhile, an operation to refloat the wrecked Costa Concordia is now being considered. Teams of engineers would work around the clock for a year to remove the ship from the shallow waters of the marine sanctuary in which it sits. However, Costa is still evaluating several other proposals for removing the ship.

Costa says the next phase in the ship's removal is "caretaking," with the intention to "guarantee environmental monitoring and protection with the assistance of experts using dedicated means and resources, and to clean up the seabed and the area around the hull." Conducted by the Neri/Smit Dutch Salvage team, this process will last one to two months.

The extraction of a half-million gallons of fuel from the ship, which began February 12, was completed in late March. According to a company statement from Costa Crociere, which owns and operates Concordia, the fuel was removed from 17 tanks, with a small amount of fuel that "pose no significant environmental risk" to be left in the tanks' bulkheads. The Neri/Smit Salvage team led the operation.

Costa has offered passengers who were onboard when the ship struck a rock and capsized 11,000 euros each (about $14,500) in compensation. The amount, according to Costa, is to cover "all patrimonial and non-patrimonial damages, including loss of baggage and personal effects, psychological distress and loss of enjoyment of the cruise vacation." The lump sum extended to non-paying children as well, regardless of age.

The deal did not cover crewmembers, those who lost loved ones or those who were injured.

The compensation was announced after negotiations between the line and consumer groups. Passengers were free to reject the deal and take legal recourse if they so desired. To that end, several class-action lawsuits are reportedly in the works against the line, asking for far more per claimant than the deal offered by the line. The largest potential monetary payout demanded to date is $460 million in a suit brought on behalf of four Americans and two Italians who rejected the 11,000 euro offer made by Costa Crociere. The civil suit was announced at in Genoa but filed in Miami by Mitchell Proner, an American personal injury lawyer.