Rescuers resumed work aboard of the wreck of the cruise liner Costa Concordia on Thursday, the Italian navy said, as a decision loomed about when and if to call off the search for survivors.
Authorities are considering when to change the operation from rescue to recovery, Coast Guard spokesman Cosimo Nicastro said Thursday.
At least 11 people are known to have been killed since the disaster, and about two dozen are still missing.
Declaring the operation to be recovery rather than rescue would allow salvage experts to start pumping fuel out of the ship, potentially averting an environmental catastrophe.
The ship was carrying about 2,300 tons of fuel when it hit rocks off the coast of the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night.
Rescuers will try to blow more holes in the side of the ship with explosives to allow greater access to the ship if weather allows on Thursday, Nicastro said.
The brother-in-law of the captain who has been arrested over the shipwreck defended him in an Italian newspaper Thursday.
Capt. Francesco Schettino “managed to avoid a tragedy — it could have been worse,” Maurilio Russo said in Corrierre della Sera.
And he denied that he captain had abandoned ship.
“He was not running away, he came down [from the ship] to survey the damage,” Russo said.
Russo also said the route the captain took was not out of the ordinary.
”It is a usual procedure, the owners are well aware of it, it is useless to pretend otherwise,” he said. “Passengers pay to see something and skirting very close to the shore is part of the show.”
Schettino’s parish priest Don Gennaro Starita accused the media of “killing him” in an interview with with Italian newspaper.
“It’s a shame,” he said. “Already there are all these dead people, do we want to add another one to the list?”
The priest said he he plans to visit the captain in the next couple of days “to express solidarity.”
Schettino may face charges including manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning a ship when passengers were still on board, according to legal papers.
Prosecutor Francesco Verusio has accused the captain of piloting the ship too fast to allow him to react to dangers, causing the shipwreck, according to legal papers.
Judge Valeria Montesarchio’s initial ruling found Schettino changed the ship’s course, steering too close to shore and causing the ship to hit a rock.
The judge said the captain admitted to making a mistake and that, at the time of the collision, he was navigating by sight.
In her preliminary investigation, Montesarchio said there appears to be considerable evidence against the captain, whom she said showed “imprudence and inexperience.”
The judge’s findings included: Schettino made no serious attempt to return to the ship, he underestimated the damage to the Concordia and he failed to alert authorities in a timely manner.
“The captain could not but realize right away the gravity of the situation both because of the tilt and because he was alerted by the crew of the water influx,” Montesarchio said.
The captain abandoned ship while at least 100 people were still on board, the judge said.
Montesarchio described the shipwreck as “a disaster of global proportion.”
Officials named one of the victims Wednesday as Sandor Feher, a Hungarian member of the crew.
His body was one of five recovered Tuesday.
The mayor’s office in Grosseto, the provincial capital, said 26 people remained missing, but that number may include some of the five victims found Tuesday.
The family of two missing Americans, Gerald and Barbara Heil of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, said it was thankful for perilous attempts to find those still unaccounted for.
“While it is certainly hard for us to see the recovery efforts stall due to the unstable conditions … we are also very concerned for the safety of the Italian coast guard as they continue to put forth a heroic effort in trying to find those who remain missing,” relatives wrote.
Experts say chances of finding survivors are slim.
