All language subtitles for Raising The Costa Concordia (2014)

Raising The Costa Concordia

Off the coast of Italy,

Raising The Costa Concordia

an elite team of engineers
is completing the final stage

of an epic endeavor...

the operation to raise and tow
away the 114,000 ton wreck

of the Costa Concordia.

It's something
that has never been done,

has never been attempted.

She's very finely balanced,

and if you disturb that balance
she goes into deep water.

In 2012, this colossal
vessel crashed into the rocks

and capsized on the island of Giglio.

32 people lost their
lives trying to escape.

It is something that you could never
imagine that can happen.

It's like a nightmare.

Costing more than $1 billion,

the task of removing
the ship from the rocks

is one of the greatest engineering feats
ever undertaken.

This job has such large
ramifications for the people

of Giglio, you know all
the chips are on the table.

For two years,
cameras have been following

the team as they battle fierce storms...

and a mountain of mangled metal.

This is the exclusive inside
story of the race to clear up

the world's biggest shipwreck.

The island of Giglio.

A holiday hot spot just
off the coast of Italy...

and the site where
the Costa Concordia Cruise Ship

crashed in 2012.

Ease it to the right.

DJ, DJ, do you copy?

Down easy on the right.

Today, after over two years work by

an international team
of more than 500 engineers,

divers, welders, and crane operators,

the stricken vessel is about
to be floated off the rocks

and towed to a scrap yard
where she will be dismantled.

- How long do we need?
- 870.

It's the culmination
of thousands of hours of work

for the project's manager.

We don't like delays.

So when we have 500 people
on the project

plus all the equipment
it's $1 million a day.

Morning, guys.

Zambia-born master mariner Nick Sloane

has salvaged over 80 ships,
tankers and oil rigs

in a globe-trotting
career spanning 34 years.

Bigger than the Titanic
and weighing more than 100,000 tons,

removing the wreck of
the Costa Concordia

has been his most
challenging project to date.

The size of the ship
and the location makes it more

challenging than anything
that has been done before.

We have used over 30,000 tons
of steel in the fabrication of

all the components,
and we're doing all of that

just to refloat it out of Giglio.

Life for the 1450 residents of this

Mediterranean paradise
can now return to normal.

Their homes have been under
the world's spotlight

ever since that fateful night
when the Costa Concordia crashed.

13th Jan 2012.

The Costa Concordia sets sail
from the port of Civitavecchia

en route to the city of Savona.

On board, 3,200 passengers
and 1,000 crew.

But that afternoon, the ship's captain
makes a fateful decision.

He decides to divert the ship
to the Island of Giglio,

sailing along the coast,
close to the shore.

With the vessel travelling
under manual control

and no appropriately
detailed maps of the area,

she crashes into an underwater reef.

The impact rips
a 170-foot-long gash in the hull.

Seawater floods inside,
causing the ship to capsize

onto the rocks in about an hour.

32 people lose their lives in the biggest
maritime evacuation in history.

In the weeks following the disaster,

the Italian authorities
assemble a crack team

of international engineers
to work out how to remove a ship

that has collapsed on its side.

Franco Porcellacchia leads
the project for the ship's owners.

Franco knows the Costa Concordia
better than anyone else,

because he helped to design her.

I am a naval architecture
marine engineer.

I was in charge of the
construction of this vessel

in the old days.

It is very sad. It is something
that you can never imagine

that can happen, it's like a nightmare.

Franco's concerned

that this human tragedy
doesn't turn into an ecological disaster.

The vessel crashed in an area
of outstanding natural beauty.

The sea around Giglio
is full of stunning corals

and rare marine species.

Our commitment
was to restore the situation

and to give back the island to the people
living in the island,

creating the least damage
possible to the environment.

Removing the ship without disturbing

Giglio's fragile ecosystem
calls for a unique plan.

One established method would
be to carefully cut the vessel

into smaller pieces,
taking it away bit by bit.

To do this, salvage teams
would need to anchor platforms

either side of the wreck.

Between them, they would stretch a wire

with an abrasive coating
almost as tough as diamond.

Powerful winches would then pull
the wire back and forth...

driving it through the hull,

slicing the ship into
manageable pieces

which they can tow away.

Engineers have used
this technique before...

to remove the wreck
of the Tricolor cargo ship.

The vessel, which was
carrying 2800 new cars,

sank off the coast of France in 2002.

It took nearly two years to dice
the ship into nine pieces

and tow them away.

The Costa Concordia weighs
twice as much as the Tricolor.

Cutting the ship up
would not only take longer,

but could also destroy
this underwater haven.

Well, if you think of it as a hotel
with over 4,000 people,

with luggage, bedding, mattresses, food,

there's absolutely a lot of stuff
that can start floating

out of a ship
when you start cutting it up.

To reduce the danger of pollution,

Nick must find a way
to remove the wreck intact.

Inspiration comes from
an unusual source...

In 1941, the USS Oklahoma battleship

was sunk in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

More than 400 sailors were on board.

Nine torpedoes tore a 250-foot-long hole
in the ship's hull.

Water flooded inside, rolling it over.

Only 32 sailors survived.

To clear the harbor, military engineers

needed a way to haul
the 27,500-ton vessel upright.

They planned a bold operation
using cables and winches.

First they dropped coral along her bow
to pin the ship in place.

Then they bolted wooden
frames onto the hull.

They attached high strength
steel cables running through

a network of pulleys...

and hooked them up them
to powerful winches made from

streetcar engines
concreted into the shore.

By pulling steadily over
three months the salvage crews

gently rolled her upright.

They call this technique parbuckling.

The Oklahoma
was a really, really big ship.

The largest of her type
ever to be parbuckled.

That was obviously inside a harbor area.

You can use the harbor walls
and the land on either side

so they chose to pull it towards the land.

But in our situation, we've just got
the deep blue sea out there.

Nick's team plan
to use a similar technique

to right the Costa Concordia
in one piece.

But with the vessel resting
on its starboard side

they can't pull the ship
towards the shore,

they must roll her out to sea,
making the task even harder.

To pull off this feat,
they must build a huge platform

under the ship to support her hull
as she rolls.

They'll fit massive tanks filled
with air to her port side.

On top of the tanks
a battery of powerful jacks

pulling on a web of steel wires.

As the jacks pull,

the air tanks will act like giant
floatation aids to cushion her descent

as she rolls down into the water.

Only when the ship rests
on the platform can the team

re-float her and tow her away.

We will lift the vessel in one piece,

and we will take the vessel away.

In a project like this,
that has no comparison

with anything else done in the world,

you are always nervous
about something new.

The structure of the Costa Concordia

is much flimsier than that
of the USS Oklahoma battleship.

There's a risk that the pulling
forces could tear her apart.

On Giglio, engineers
are beginning work salvaging

the Costa Concordia shipwreck.

They estimate the operation,
paid for by maritime insurers,

will cost $300 million
and take just over a year.

The first task for the team
is to prevent the sea

from washing the ship away.

If you see the profile of Giglio,

from the top up by the castle,

it's a 35 to 45 degree slope
that she's on.

What you see underwater
is these two little ridges

she's balanced on,
and if you disturb that balance,

she goes into deep water.

The wreck balances
precariously on a rocky ridge.

Strong waves could send her
crashing into deep water...

making salvage virtually impossible.

So the crew must secure
the ship to the ridge.

They'll fix anchor blocks onto the rocks

and run high-strength
cables under the keel

threading them through
jacks bolted to the hull.

It will take this giant cradle
of steel to hold the ship steady

as the team prepare
to raise her off the rocks.

Dive Superintendent Yurij Bean
leads an elite team

of 44 deep water divers joining forces

with the engineers to install the cradle.

Yurij has 18 years' experience
of industrial diving.

It looks, it looks good.

But this job will test him and his team.

We used to work with oil and gas.

We used to work in rigs
in the middle of nothing

in the middle of the sea.

Here this kind of wreck
removal is completely different.

Stop there.

Drilling holes in the tough granite
to anchor the cables

is a formidable task.

It's a constant battle against nature.

As winter approaches,
strong winds whip up from Africa,

making sea conditions
dangerous and slowing the work.

Weather's always your worst enemy
in a salvage operation.

We had waves going straight
over the red light house.

And in fact in 2008 that whole
breakwater was destroyed.

So it gets pretty nasty out here

and that's our worst enemy,

especially this time of the year.

It takes Nick's team six months
to secure the wreck.

The weather delays have added
over $80 million to the operation.

We lost two months with the weather

and then another two-three months

just with trying to drill
12 meters into the bed rock.

Tied to metal anchors,

a cradle of steel cables
hugs the ship tight against the shoreline.

With the ship finally secure,

the second stage
of the salvage mission can begin.

To catch the Costa Concordia
as she rolls upright,

the team must build
a giant underwater platform.

Built from 5,000 tons of steel,
the combined platform sections

will cover an area
the size of a football field.

Constructed in shipyards across Italy,

the crew must tow the six sections
of platform to the crash site.

Here a powerful crane must
maneuver 1,000 tons of steel

onto the foundations with
extreme precision to make sure

the platform is level.

The platforms are being installed,

and it's just going to make
it a level bed as they say,

and so when the vessel will be
righted she will be laying on

a very secure, even flat table.

To be able to put the
platforms at this level

is quite a feat.

But the platform must be built
on rocks 100 feet deep,

a dangerous challenge
for the dive crew.

On the island of Giglio,

massive six-foot diameter
drills work round the clock

to install the platform
that will support the Costa Concordia.

To guide the platform
onto its foundations,

the team needs underwater eyes,

a fleet of remote control robots,

fitted with special cameras.

Basically what it is,

it's a little submarine,
a little hand control unit

to control forwards,
backwards, left and right.

It's very similar to flying an airplane.

I can stay in the water
for anything up to 12 hours

without it having to come out
and go through

the decompression that a diver
would have to go through.

To make sure that the ship rolls
smoothly onto the platform,

the team must plug the gaps between

the spine of the ship's hull
and the surrounding rocks with concrete.

To get the concrete
into these hard-to-reach spots,

they'll position huge
fabric bags under the keel.

Then they'll inject them
with cement to build

stacks of rock-hard mattresses.

This bed of concrete should
hold the spine of the ship

firmly in place as they
wrench her up off the rocks.

The finish
of the cement bags is critical

to the success
of the parbuckling project.

Each one's 40, 50 cubic meters,

and it's just this massive wall
20 meters high.

It's like the Great Wall of China.

While work constructing the support
platform continues on Giglio...

90 miles away, in Livorno,
workers are assembling

the air tanks to install
on the side of the ship.

The tanks, called sponsons, are huge,

towering over 100 feet high.

To re-float the wreck,
we need 30 sponsons like this.

This is the first wreck removal
did in this way

with this kind of structure,
so this is a new type of engineering.

Massive barges
deliver each tank to Giglio.

Up on the boom, up on the boom.

Up on the boom.

OK, sounds good. Perfect. Thanks.

The tanks weigh up to 600-tons.

Lowering them into place onto
the side of the stricken ship

takes great skill.

If you think that we've got 66,000 cubic
meters of buoyancy,

and it's all strapped on like arm bands

around a baby in a swimming pool.

The port side was a challenge
as we had to weld them

within 48 mm of each other.

This vast amount of buoyancy
around the ship is something

that has never been done
or attempted before

so it's very special.

Back on the mainland in Milan,

engineers are analyzing
a unique survey of the crash site.

We can see that in principal
we can lower down

this before it floating
by four or five meter.

Surveyors have
scanned the rocks around

the ship using sonar and lasers

-to build up a detailed 3
- D
visualization of the ridge

that the vessel is clinging to.

So if you have some
other sections to show me.

The images reveal a critical problem.

The bow of the ship is hanging
over the edge of a cliff.

It's been discovered that we could have
a significant deflection of the bow

that could cause a problem
during the refloating phase.

While the platform and cement
support the ship's keel,

its 290-foot-long bow sticks out
unsupported, over the edge of the rock.

As the ship starts to roll
onto the platform,

the bow could sag or even snap off.

It's impossible to extend
the platform to support the bow,

the drop is too deep.

We have to think
of something new and something

that has to be shaped according
to the shape of the bow.

This is becoming critical.

So here we are.

This is a major blow.

Without a plan to support the bow,

the team can't raise the ship.

It's the peak of the summer
holiday season in Italy.

A colossal vessel looms
close to Giglio's packed beach

carrying the final monster delivery,

engineers need, to raise
the Costa Concordia cruise ship.

Called blister tanks,
they are the team's ingenious

solution to stopping
the unsupported bow of the ship

snapping off as she rolls upright.

It's like a patient with a spinal injury.

So you're going to get a lot of twisting

and with the forces
you could lose the bow.

The blister tanks are sculpted
to cosset the bow perfectly.

To position them, engineers must
first flood them with water...

then slide them around the wreck.

When they fill the tanks with air,

they'll form a huge floating
brace wrapping round the bow.

It will give us over
4500 tons of net buoyancy.

But they'll hold the neck
of the Concordia,

and that's essential
to the success of the operation.

The air tanks may be big...

but the blister tank
collar is even bigger.

Altogether it weighs 1,700 tons,

that's seven and a half times
the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

The blister are as tall
as a 15-story building.

To match the attachment on the bow
with the precise inclination...

I think is something
that has never been done,

has never been attempted

To secure the tanks in place,

the crew must slide
them onto 60 foot-long pins.

This will be like landing
a spacecraft on the moon.

The team slowly floods
the starboard tank with seawater

to submerge them.

Winch lines connect the tanks
to huge floating cranes

to stop them sinking out of reach.

The salvage master
is in constant contact

with the crane and winch operators.

We want to run the big winch
all the way back to the stern.

Put it through a stack block.

Yeah, Roger that.

We're on it now.

Let me know when
you've got some tension on it.

Slack coming back up on it?

Yeah. Come back up on it.

It's gonna get tight in a minute.

We're starting to stretch it out.

It takes six whole days
to dock the tanks.

The bow problem is solved.

But at a price.

The cost of clearing up
the wreck has now exceeded

the half a billion dollars
it took to build the vessel.

It's now 15 months after
work began salvaging

the Costa Concordia shipwreck.

With the underwater support
platform....air tanks....

and jacks in place....

the operation to right the vessel
can finally begin.

The team needs
a window of calm weather.

Strong waves or gusts could
smash the delicate ship

back onto the rocks at any moment
as they pull her upright.

The kind of trending forecast,

it's getting a little bit worse
on Wednesday,

and Thursday bothers me a bit.

What worries me the most at the moment

is the early hours of Tuesday,
if it's really building up as

rapidly as they forecast.

I think might be a second reconsideration
early in the morning tomorrow

but right now it's a go.

To right the ship,
first they'll fire up the jacks.

These will pull the cables
tight prizing the ship

up off the ridge...

while the air tanks cushion
her descent into the water.

The big unknown, whether
the fragile ship will break apart

as they wrench her off the rocks.

Since she first settled on the rock,

she's actually molded
herself around the rock,

and she's subsided
by about three meters.

When you try and parbuckle her,

there'll be what they call
a breakout force,

and that's to tear her off the rock,

and that force is unknown.

Noise will be the first sign
that the ship is breaking up.

I think we're going to
hear some popping and grinding

and some other things.

There will be
some minor structural failure.

The weaker parts
of the ship will collapse.

As you get the deformation
and things happen

then you have to respond
and react quite quickly.

Tomorrow is the big day,

the day Nick's team will
raise the Costa Concordia.

But overnight the storm they
feared could hit the island

strikes, threatening
to shut the operation down.

The world is waiting for news.

This operation is going
to be delayed for an hour,

and that's because we had some
very bad weather last night,

heavy, heavy rain.

You'll never be 100% ready.

Some of the electronic guys
wanted another week

to just retest the systems.

And you say well we're as good
as we can be in the time that

we've been allowed.

It's time that she comes
up and today's the day.

For Nick it's the moment of truth.

You are nervous but your mind's racing,

what have we forgotten...

you've been over the checklist
many times before.

Some things you can control,
some things you can't.

The operation's
nerve center is on a barge

at the front of the ship.

Accelerometers and gyroscopes
placed at key points on board

the brittle ship feed its vital signs
to Nick here in real time.

Just confirm all
personnel off the Concordia.

The operation gets
underway just after 9.00 am.

we're going up 10%."

We have almost 13,000
tons of pulling force

on the off shore side.

But yeah, everyone's nervous
because we are not sure

of the break out force is.

The crew estimate
that the jacks may need to apply

6,000 tons of lifting force
to dislodge the ship

from the rocks.

When we got to 5,000 tons
and things went pretty quiet.

Six and a half thousand tons,
you get a bit nervous

because you say, OK, now we are
right at the upper threshold

of where we should be,

and at 6,800, 6,900 tons
she started coming up.

It takes three hours to rotate the ship

just three degrees breaking her
away from the ridge.

We are starting to see some progress.

We can see parts of the ship
that have been submerged

for the last 20 months, and they are
emerging covered in slime and rust.

The ship could break
open at any moment spewing

toxic waste into the sea.

So they surround it with oil
booms to protect the beaches.

Spotters circle the ship,

keeping an eagle eye out for cracks
as she lifts.

Going up

Slowly, the Concordia rises
up from the depths,

in one piece.

There was noise,
but it was mostly subsea.

The noise that we were expecting

was when there was going
to be collapse.

The ship itself was stronger
than we expected

after 20 months.

It's taken over
seven hours to haul the ship

one sixth of the way up.

We were about
two hours late getting started

and it was going a bit slower

because we're pulling with a little more
force than originally intended to pull,

so it's a little bit more
force is a little bit slower.

Now the team
must undertake the second,

challenging stage of
the roll, in the dark.

The jacks may have pulled
the wreck off the rocks.

But there's a danger that
gravity might crash the ship

onto the platform.

The only things stopping this
are the air tanks

that act like giant floatation aids.

Once they've caught the vessel,

the team can slowly flood
the tanks with water

to gently lower the ship
onto the platform.

40 degrees is the point
where gravity will take over,

and so we will need to
be very careful there,

that's where we start
to transition from pulling

to ballasting, or filling
the tanks with water.

Touchdown will be precarious.

Six robots scrutinize the hull
to check she rolls on target.

I think by the time we started
the ballast sequence

we were getting pretty confident.

And as she came down it
was a perfect landing.

The ship touches
down on the platform at 4:00 am.

It was a lot longer
than people expected

so the nerves were pretty shot.

Everything came together.

She was perfect.

Far better than we expected.

The next day, Nick's anxious to inspect

just how badly smashed the ship is.

The wreck may well now be upright,

but its hull still sits submerged
about 100 feet below the water line.

To refloat the vessel,
Nick needs to fit giant air tanks

to the newly raised side of the ship.

We'll start off just between
the starboard bow and the Pioneer.

The starboard side has been ground down
into the rocks for 20 months.

There, you see that damage
just underneath the blue crane?

So she actually slid
down the cliff three meters,

and that's why all the
balconies have been moved up,

almost it looks as if
the whole ship is bent.

The damage looks pretty bad,
it's like a bad car crash.

Before they can raise the vessel,

they must strengthen
the smashed area

to make it strong enough
to support the air tanks.

But as winter storms batter the ship,

the job becomes more hazardous.

The weather's now
more rain, more seas.

The temperature is dropping..

You can get three to four
to five meter seas.

They have no option
but to work through the winter

to get the ship ready for
refloating next summer.

It's spring and the Costa Concordia

has survived its third winter
on the rocks.

With calmer weather in the Mediterranean,

the salvage team can begin
the next stage of the mission,

to refloat the ship.

To do this, they need to boost
the vessel's buoyancy.

They'll fix 15 extra tanks
onto the ship's starboard side.

By slowly pumping air into the tanks,

and forcing water out, they'll create
a gigantic lifebelt around the vessel

with 66 thousand of tons of lifting force.

This way, the Costa Concordia
should finally rise up to the surface.

It's a race to the finish line to remove

the wreck before summer tourists
arrive to soak up the sun.

This is actually a hard hat.

It's made of hard hat material,

so on a hot day I've got big ears
that stick out of a normal hat.

OK, 4-K-4 Mobile One.

Go ahead.

OK. This can come onto the bow.

They need to fit each
tank onto the crumpled side,

as deep as 90 feet below
the water line,

without further damaging the ship.

Submerging 570 tons of steel
onto precisely the right spot

needs a heavy lifter
with a delicate touch...

one of the most powerful
floating cranes in the world.

It's a new type of heavy lifter...

and this is the biggest job it's tackled.

OK. She's all yours.

Can you stand by
to come on board your...

Standing by.

It's a very tricky operation.

Normally in these kinds
of operations, you're lifting

these types of weights out of the water,
not putting them in the water.

Do you copy?

Yes, I copy.

The installation of S11.

Congratulations.

It takes an average
of two and a half days to inch

each of the tanks down into place.

Divers reel chains underneath
the hull to secure them

to the crumpled wreck.

One more connection to make,

and we'll have the fourth chain
in by 9:00 this evening.

OK locked, check the other one.

Locked.

After three months' work,

the day finally arrives when
they can re-float the ship.

The operation's nerve center
has moved to the top deck

of the Concordia.

VC VC Mobile One.

Go ahead.

OK.

What's the diver doing at the moment?

This is a critical moment.

If Nick pumps air into the tanks too fast,

he could put too much strain on the ship

and break her apart.

You've got a lot of decks of water

that's going to be trapped in
the decks as we bring it up.

So we've got to do it
one deck at a time

and let that water flow out.

So if you did it too quickly
then you'd lose stability

and she'd most probably roll over.

And, uh, S18,

23, 69

Let's start with 18 knots.

Nick gives the signal to start filling
the tanks with air.

OK, perfecto. Grazie.

It takes
11 tense hours to raise the ship

seven feet up off the
underwater platform.

So deck number six
has come out of the water.

It's tough to see from this side,

but deck six is now out of the water.

The Costa Concordia is
floating for the first time

since she went down.

In controlled stages
they pump air into the tanks

for nine days and nights,
raising the ship 46 feet.

870.

870.

Deck five will come
out of the water.

Deck four will come out of the water,
and then we hope

deck three will come
out of the water.

And the water level will
be just below deck three.

So that will leave five
more decks under the water.

Finally, the Concordia floats high enough

for them to tow her to the scrapyard.

The bow came out of the water.

Now it looks like a real ship.

This is spectacular.

788 days after salvage work began,

in one of the greatest engineering
operations of our time,

the Costa Concordia sets sail
on her final journey,

to a shipyard in Genoa where she
will be cut up to be recycled.

The total cost of salvaging the ship
is now estimated to be $1.2 billion.

But no one can put a price
on the human cost.

I have mixed feelings now.

This is not as joyful as it should be.

Because we cannot forget
that the origin of this is a tragedy.

The technology invented to pull off
this herculean feat

could transform future
ship salvage operations.

Because the Costa Concordia
will not be the last ship

that sinks at sea.

This is the largest salvage in history,

but you know what? Around the corner
there'll be a larger one.