News of the capsized Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia shocked the entire country recently. In our last post we discussed the details of the cruise ship wreck including the fact that nearly two dozen people were missing and that the wrongful death toll has climbed to 11 people.

Rescue workers had to suspend their search of the massive cruise ship recently after sensors detected movement of the ship. Rescuers were worried that the ship would dislodge from its perch on the underwater rocks by the island of Giglio and sink to the sea bed. Currently the ship is leaning on its side and many survivors are recounting stories of the chaotic evacuation procedures aboard the ship.

The search efforts on the Costa Concordia recently resumed but only for the top part of the ship. Underwater search efforts will not resume until Saturday according to the Italian Coast Guard. It is also unclear whether the search and rescue operation will be converted to a recovery operation to allow salvage workers to start empting the ship's fuel tanks.

Authorities are assessing their options to help stabilize the ship and prevent it from slipping. One possibility is that anchors could be thrown around the rocks that are holding the Costa Concordia up. The anchors would be tethered around the ship with chains. The problem is that the size and weight of the ship make this hard to achieve.

"It's very difficult," an Italian coast guard official said. "The Concordia weighs 110,000 tons and it's like a 300 meter-high skyscraper in a horizontal position."

There were about 4,200 people aboard the cruise ship when it crashed last week. About 3,200 passengers were on the ship with 1,000 crew members. Among the missing passengers is a Minnesotan couple.

The Costa Concordia's captain is currently under house arrest based on allegations that he caused the wreck and then abandoned ship before passengers were able to safely get off of the sinking vessel. We will discuss further details of the search and rescue operation as they become available.

Source: CNN, "Rescuers to resume search on doomed Italian cruise ship," Jan. 20, 2012