On the advice of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the operations for the recovery of the 27 April 18 vessel in the Sicilian Strait, on which it is estimated were approximately 2015 people, began by the Ministry of Defense, last 700 April. The wreck is positioned around the 85 miles from the Libyan coasts and at a depth of about 370 mt .. Tomorrow the naval units of the device will return to the sea to resume operations, interrupted due to unfavorable weather and sea conditions.
The coordination of the entire recovery operation at sea was entrusted to the Navy which, in addition to guaranteeing an adequate safety framework, will provide logistic support to the Trentino company Impresub Diving and Marine Contractor that, through the ship Ievoli Ivory (photo on the right), will lift the boat from the seabed through a robotic recovery system, controlled from the surface and designed ad hoc, built on the basis of the size of the fishing boat.
The command of the operations at sea is entrusted to rear-admiral Paolo Pezzutti, commander of the command divers and raiders Theseus Tesei COMSUBIN, on board the rescue ship Antaeus (photo opening), with a team of divers on board Diving Operations Group (GOS). The naval device also includes the amphibious unit St. George (photo at the bottom), the minesweeper Alghero and the motorbike transport coastal ship Isole that, through the use of Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) of the GOS, will carry out a verification of the seabed at the end of the recovery operations. The arrival of the wreck is estimated for next week, not before 09 May, depending on the weather and sea conditions and any technical and operational needs.
The inside of the vessel once it is afloat, will be kept at a temperature around 5 ° / 10 ° by the use of liquid nitrogen. Then it will be placed on a barge the size of 30 meters for 90 and then transferred to the Nato di Melilli (SR) landing stage. In the port of the city of the Syracusan a tensile structure has been set up, made by the fire brigade, refrigerated, long 30 meters, wide 20 and high 10, where the wreck will be placed for the extraction of the bodies. The firefighters will be the ones to enter the barge to recover the bodies, adopting the procedures established for nuclear-biological-chemical-radiological interventions (NBCR). For weeks the teams have been training on twin boats, experimenting with access methods, procedures and identifying the safest and easiest penetration methods. To speed up operations, a fire brigade team was embarked on a ship St. George of the Navy, with the task of carrying out the first surveys on the wreck and anticipating useful information to the teams ready to land. It will operate in absolute safety, with biological risk excluded by the Ministry of Health, both for the inhabitants in the surrounding area and for the personnel of the fire brigade. In any case, a constant check of the conditions on the spot will be conducted. The wreck will be cleared and then immediately disposed of.
The bodies will be examined by experts from Forensic Anthropology and Odontology Laboratory (Labanof), active in the department of Human Morphology and Biomedical Sciences of Forensic Medicine of the University of Milan for the acquisition of useful information to create networks at European level that allows to trace the identity of bodies through the crossing of data. The whole operation will take place in maximum safety, and there will be no health problems for the population linked to the presence of the bodies. The bodies will be buried in cemeteries in Sicily.
It is an activity made possible thanks to the synergy between the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Health, the extraordinary commissioner for missing persons and the public prosecutor's office of Catania, and sees the involvement on the ground of around 150 people a day including personnel from the Italian Navy, fire brigades, the Italian Red Cross military corps, the maritime health, area and border office (USMAF), provincial health assistance (ASP), customs agency, as well as the authorities and local authorities insistent in the territory.
The Ministry of Defense will communicate subsequent updates on recovery operations through the press office of the Navy.
