'NOVA: Sunken Ship Rescue'
(DVD / NR / 2015 / PBS)
Overview: NOVA follows the epic operation to secure, raise, and salvage the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which ran aground and tragically capsized off the coast of Italy on January 13th 2012, killing 32 people.
DVD Verdict: On January 13th, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship inexplicably ran aground killing 32 people. The wreck stretched the length of three football fields, weighed 45,000 tons and lay half submerged on the site of a protected reef, with a 160-foot-long hole in its hull.
As the traumatic documentary plays out, we discover that ANSA quoted two Italian journalists who happened to be among the passengers taking the Mediterranean cruise as saying the accident happened during dinner hour. "We were dining when the lights went out, and suddenly we heard a bang and the dishes fell to the floor," ANSA also quoted one of the journalist-passengers, Luciano Castro, as saying. "It was like a scene from the Titanic," another passenger aboard, journalist Mara Parmegiani, told ANSA.
The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" -- it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio -- "ripping a gash 50 meters (165 feet) across" on the left side of the ship, and started taking on water.
The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier.
But moving it from its precarious perch on the edge of an underwater cliff will be a huge technical and logistical challenge. Now, NOVA joins a team of more than 500 divers and engineers working around the clock as they attempt the biggest ship recovery project in history. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.
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