MS Bulgaria to be fully examined by noon - EMERCOM

"One day is needed to make checks at all decks for already the third time," the head of the Russian State Inspection for Small Size Vessels, Vadim Seryogin, said at a telephone conference late on Wednesday. He said this work could be completed by noon on Thursday. After this, preparations to raise the ship will begin, he said.

According to Itar-Tass, on Wednesday, seven divers from the Defence Ministry's 40th State Research Institute [of rescue, diving and deep-water operations] examined the ship. The group includes highly qualified divers with special equipment who took part, in particular, in raising the Kursk nuclear submarine.

They work out a scheme to raise the Bulgaria. Experts note that this will be a difficult multi-stage process with the use of Falcon submersibles, which can operate at a depth of up to 300 meters. Bulgaria sank at a depth of 20 meters, but the bottom there is muddy and the current is strong.

Bulgaria lies on the starboard. When it is brought to the surface it will become clear whether portholes were open after a storm warning announced on that day, in violation of security rules.

Sources from Kazan's Devyatayev Technical Secondary School said there had been no such large-scale ship raising operations in the republic. Many compare the Bulgaria shipwreck with the tragedy of June 1983, when the Alexander Suvorov passenger ship ran into a railroad bridge support on the border of the Ulyanovsk region, near Tatarstan. The death toll in that tragedy was over 170 people, many people were injured, the sources said. But in that accident it was not the whole ship that was to be taken to surface.

According to different data, the operation will begin on July 16 or 19. However, the cranes necessary for the operation are expected to arrive only on July 17, Transport Minister Igor Levitin said.

As of early on Thursday, the death toll in the shipwreck reached 105 people. There were 208 people on board, and 79 were rescued. Some dead bodies were found outside the ship.

The MS Bulgaria, which was on a Bolgary-Kazan river voyage, sank in the Kuibyshev water reservoir in conditions of stormy weather on July 10. Built in 1955, the ship listed to the starboard and sank within minutes.

Its official capacity was 140 people, but reportedly it was carrying 208 people with some of the passengers having boarded unregistered.

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