NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
GIGLIO, Italy-- Rough seas delayed the planned start Saturday of a salvage operation to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship off Italy?s Tuscan coast.
Recovery operations continued, however, and on Saturday yielded a 17th body: A woman who wasn't wearing a life jacket was found by divers on the submerged sixth floor deck, civil protection officials said.
The Concordia ran aground on Jan. 13 off the port of the island of Giglio after the captain deviated from his planned route and gashed the hull of the ship on a reef. Some 4,200 passengers and crew endured a panicked evacuation after the abandon ship alarm didn't sound until the ship had capsized so much that some life boats couldn't be lowered.
Sixteen people remain unaccounted for and are presumed dead. The body discovered Saturday has not yet been identified.
DigitalGlobe
With heavy seas and strong winds forecast to continue, work on removing more than 500,000 gallons of heavy fuel aboard the capsized ship may be held up for days, according to a spokesman for SMIT, the Dutch company that is managing the operation.
"Starting operations depends on the weather conditions," Martijn Schuttevaer told reporters. "The forecast is for the bad weather to last until Tuesday and we don't expect to be able to recommence activities until the middle of the week."
A barge carrying pumping equipment that was attached to the capsized ship was withdrawn after strong winds and high waves worsened conditions for the divers working on the huge wreck.
Pier Paolo Cito / AP
Italian police scuba divers sail around the grounded Costa Concordia on Friday.
The accident, expected to trigger the most expensive maritime insurance claim ever, has set off a legal battle in which U.S. and Italian lawyers are preparing class-action and individual lawsuits against the operator, Costa Cruises.
In a bid to limit the fallout, Costa, a unit of Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise ship operator, has offered the more than 3,000 passengers $14,460 each in compensation on condition they drop any legal action.
The Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest, suspected of causing the accident by steering too close to shore, and faces charges of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship before the evacuation was complete.
The ship's first officer, Ciro Ambrosio, has also been questioned by prosecutors but the company itself has not been implicated in the investigation at this stage.
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