Engineers start to raise wrecked cruise liner off Italian island

Engineers started Monday to lift the wrecked Costa Concordia upright off Italy's Tuscan coast, a salvage operation said to be one of the most complex and costly ever attempted. The vast hulk of the 290-meter-long and 36-meter-wide cruise liner has lain on its side for more than 20 months off the tiny Giglio Island, west of Italy, where it hit rocks on Jan. 13, 2012, and killed 32 people. The lifting began at about 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) Monday, after a three-hour delay caused by a storm that pushed back the positioning of a barge hosting a floating command room center. In the center, engineers using remote controls will guide a synchronized leverage system of pulleys and counterweights to delicately nudge the ship free from its rocky seabed perch. Salvage workers were concerned about the resistance of the hull of the 114,500-tonne ship to the enormous pressure it will have to withstand as it is winched up, while activists warned thousands of tons of toxic waste would spill into the water. The operation, expected to last up to 12 hours, has cost more than 600 million euros (about 800 million U.S. dollars) and could cost more than 1 billion dollars in the end. Islanders, whose peaceful life has been interrupted since the tragedy happened, were relieved that the ship will be refloated and towed away in the near future. Costa Concordia, which carried 4,229 passengers and crew members onboard, tore a 70-meter crack in its hull on the night of the accident, after it came too close to shore at the start of a seven-day Mediterranean cruise. Survivors were shocked by the captain and crew's inability to give instruction on how to leave the ship, which came more than an hour after the incident happened. Captain Francesco Schettino, 53, has been charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship.