Salvage Team Rights Costa Concordia
ANDERSON: Well, success after 20 months in the water. The capsized cruise liner Costa Concordia has finally been set upright. It took engineers around 19 hours to roll the 114,000 ton ship onto a platform in what has been described as a perfect operation. This is the first time such a salvage operation has been attempted on a ship of this size. It's not over yet. This is jus the first step in removing and scrapping the nearly 1,000 foot ship, which won't be moved until next summer. With more on this, Matthew Chance joining us live from very close by to that salvage operation. A monumental task just to right this ship. And once righted, the extent of the damage, Matthew, very much revealed earlier today.</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, really. I mean, it was just an amazing technical achievement that they managed to roll this ship from its side upright. That was in itself something that's never been attempted with a vessel this size. And now that it is upright it's balanced very precariously on a platform that's been built on the seabed to enable the technical teams to actually survey the damage that was done by the jagged rocks to the side of the ship when it crashed up against the coastline in January 2012, of course killing 32 people. But all in all, the salvage operation, at least this first step of it, appears to have gone off without a hitch.</s>CHANCE: It was a painstaking and difficult salvage operation that took more than 19 hours to complete. Inch by inch, the giant hulk of the Costa Concordia capsized on the rocks of Giglio was hauled upright. The technique called parbuckling has never been attempted on a ship this large, twice the size of the titanic. But the results, according to salvage workers, was much better than they hoped.</s>FRANCO GABRIELLI, HEAD OF ITALIAN CIVIL PROTECTION DEPT (through translator): We are very happy at the outcome. We are happy because the challenges posed by the project as a whole, and everything that the designer imagined and figured out, was confirmed in practice. So their calculations and their design was very accurate to the point that the ship really was in the same place as expected, which was surprising somehow for us too.</s>CHANCE: And this was the reaction when news of the salvage success was announced. If vast quantities of toxic sludge on board -- engine oil mixed with rotten food and detergents, residents of Giglio were clearly relieved, a threatened environmental catastrophe had been averted. (on camera): Well, this is the first time this giant ocean liner has been seen upright since it crashed against these rocks with a loss of 32 lives in January 2012. You can see that dark watermark where it has for months laid submerged on its side, two-thirds of the Costa Concordia is still underwater, but at least it's now possible for salvage teams to properly assess the damage on its battered starboard side.</s>NICK SLOANE, SALVAGE MASTER, COSTA CONCORDIA: 16 months now.</s>CHANCE: That's crucial, say salvage workers as the ship is prepared to be refloated and eventually towed away.</s>SLOANE: Last year we had the really bad winter. And we realized that you can't beat the weather here. So we are going to be patient. We'll prepare everything we can through winter. And then in spring we'll start adding the mitigating factors so by late spring, early summer she should be out of here.</s>CHANCE: But first, a proper search is now being carried out for the two bodies never recovered from the wreck. Amid all the praise of the salvage effort, this is also now a chance for closure.</s>CHANCE: Well, I mentioned in that report, but there's an enormous sense of relief amongst the people of Giglio. It's a small island of just 1,000 people. And everyone we've spoken to absolutely relieved that this sort of nightmare in their recent history may soon, by the middle of next year at least, be coming to an end -- Becky.</s>ANDERSON: Matthew Chance there reporting. Thanks, mate. Well, the latest world news headlines are just ahead. Plus, the fashion industry accused of racial discrimination. We're going to hear from the supermodels behind this scathing letter calling for change. And a leader in international development tells us about her journey to becoming the CEO of one of the world's best known humanitarian organizations. And...</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really good, I would say.</s>ANDERSON: Could this smartphone really have more germs on it than your toilet seat? Well, one study certainly says so. We're going to investigate that after this.