GO Completes Undersea Cable Repairs Between Malta and Sicily

GO announces that the submarine cable damaged by third parties on the 5th November has been completely repaired, following round-the-clock efforts by a specialised repair vessel, which is contracted on a standby-basis for such emergencies.

The incident is now in the hands of international authorities, who are investigating the cause of the damage, believed to have been caused by a ship anchored in shallow waters just off the Sicilian coast, which managed to drag the cable – which is embedded into the seabed at that point – for around 200m before ripping it completely. Around 1.5km of cable had to be replaced and spliced in, and the cable was then once again buried into the sea-bed. The operation was carried out by a Remote Operated Vehicle, an unmanned submarine.

“Thankfully GO had done its utmost to make sure everything was in place to deal with such situations promptly. While no company can prevent these emergencies, the important thing is that in spite of the extent of the damage, the impact on customers was minimized within a very short space of time.”

”As CTO, I must praise the way in which many employees from across GO dropped everything as soon as the damage was confirmed on the weekend to be able to deal with this crisis and worked continuously to resolve it,” chief technical officer Michael Mertsch said.

[mappress]
Subsea World News Staff , November 15, 2011