US salvage teams repairing damage in USS Guardian's hull

From the Philippine News Agency (Jan 26): US salvage teams repairing damage in USS Guardian's hull

With de-fuelling completed, US Navy salvage teams are shoring (strengthening) the hull of the grounded USS Guardian (MCM-5) to prepare it for the lifting operation which will remove it from Tubbataha Reef, Sulu Sea, sometime next week.

Commodore Joseph Rustom Peña, Naval Forces West head, said US salvage teams are now checking and repairing damage to the hull of the stricken minesweeper. He said this effort is done to ensure the integrity of the vessel's hull.

De-fuelling operations started Thursday and its completion mean the start of the retrieval of the stricken ship. "To prevent potential environmental damage, a U.S. Navy-led salvage team on Jan. 25 completed removing all diesel fuel from the tanks of the mine countermeasures ship USS Guardian, which ran aground on the Tubbataha Reef one week earlier."

Rear Adm. Thomas Carney, the on-scene commander of the salvage operation, stressed: “One of our priorities was to get the fuel out of the ship in order to minimize environmental damage," a US 7th Fleet statement earlier said.

Salvage teams are still awaiting the arrival of two heavy lift ship-borne cranes from Singapore, USN personnel will continue to retrieve and transfer weapons and hazardous materials from the stranded minesweeper to another USN ship. The crane vessels contracted to support the salvage operations and are due to arrive at the scene around Feb. 1, while a large salvage vessel of the USN, the USS Salvor, arrived in the area Friday also to help in the extraction of the USS Guardian.

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