GROSSETO, Italy, July 13 (UPI) -- The removal of the half-sunk Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy may be delayed until next year, officials said.
The ship has been in its current location off the coast of Tuscany since it hit a rock formation in January 2012, killing 32 people.
Franco Gabrielli, commissioner for the Costa Concordia emergency, said Friday the group needs more information from Titan Micoperi Consortium, the company responsible for the cleanup effort, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.
"If they do not provide us with a whole range of assurances, the ship will remain in its current condition until next year when the weather conditions will permit rotating it back on its axis in absolute safety," Gabrielli said in an interview. "Despite the number of times the engineers have made simulations and hypotheses, we do not know the degree to which rocks have penetrated the side, what types of gashes they made and what the real conditions of the structure are, and thus the type of intervention they should undertake to allocate the caissons necessary to make the whole ship floatable."
