The most difficult part of the salvage operation — loading the Sewol ferry on to a transport vessel is done
Salvage crews towed a corroded 6,800-ton South Korean ferry and loaded it onto a semi-submersible transport vessel Saturday, completing what was seen as the most difficult part of the massive effort to bring the ship back to shore.
Government officials say it will take a week or two to bring the vessel to a port 90 kilometers (55 miles) away so that investigators could search for the remains of nine missing people, who were among the 304 who died when the Sewol capsized April 16, 2014.
FILE – A woman looks at caricatures of the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol outside a group memorial altar in Ansan, South Korea, Thursday, April 16, 2015. Tears and grief mixed with raw anger Thursday as black-clad relatives mourned the 300 people, mostly high school students.
Most of the victims were students on a high school trip, touching off an outpouring of national grief and soul searching about long-ignored public safety and regulatory failures. Public outrage over what was seen as a botched rescue job by the government contributed to the recent ouster of Park Geun-hye as president.
“We just got over one hump … we are trying hard to stay calm,” Lee Geum-hee, the mother of a missing schoolgirl, told a television crew.
Bringing the Sewol back to the port in Mokpo would be a step toward finding closure to one of the country’s deadliest disasters. Once the ferry reaches land, government officials say it would take about a month for the ship to be cleaned and evaluated for safety.
Investigators will then enter the wreckage and begin a search for the remains of the missing victims and for clues further illuminating the cause of the sinking, which has been blamed on overloaded cargo, improper storage and other negligence.
