Korea Ferry Disaster

[Rommie]

I knew once I saw this story that if over half the people on the boat died in this day and age in a modern country there were going to be a helluva lot of upsetting things that would have happened to make it do so.

And yeah, kicking things off, it appears the captain was one of the first to abandon ship. After they used the intercom to tell people to stay put where they were in their cabins and what not, in a society where there's extra emphasis on obeying authority more than most. Those high school kids never had a chance, while this guy hops off the boat straightaway... I can't even find the words.

I don't say it often, but hanging's too good for people like that.

[geonuc]

I'm gonna wait until the full story comes out before we decide to hang him. But, yeah, this is looking a lot like the Costa Concordia.

[The Supreme Canuck]

I mean... I kind of understand jumping ship. It's cowardly and unethical, but I understand it - self-preservation.

But telling passengers to stay put? I don't know why anyone would do that. It makes no sense.

[Morrolan]

And not just the captain: the entire crew. They all made it out bar one, while children were hunkering down in the gangways with their life jackets on, waiting for instructions that never came. I am beyond angry, I am in total furious incomprehension.

[Rommie]

Yeah, and the one crew member who didn't make it out was actually busy trying to save people.

geonuc, perhaps I spoke too soon on the hanging point, but in my defense it is BMR.

TSC, I understand human preservation as well as the next person, but there's definitely a thing in maritime law that you need to remain on the ship until the last passenger leaves. I realize this can be impossible in many cases- I mean you weren't going to get an accurate head count in the hour and a half it took for this ship to sink- but no one's exactly saying this guy did everything possible or reasonable to get people out alive. And if he didn't want to do it, he's definitely in the wrong job.

[Sigma_Orionis]

It's downright bizarre.

How did the damned thing capsize in the first place? the Costa Concordia ran aground (yeah thanks to the Capitan's stupidity) but here? Apparently the ship took a hard turn and there was a junior officer at the helm.

As for Captain asshole, they already have an arrest warrant for him and two other crew members.


Edited for spelling

[The Supreme Canuck]

Oh, I'm not disagreeing, Rommie. I'm just expressing my confusion as to why they'd tell the passengers to stay put. Leaving the boat was wrong; telling people not to evacuate was unnecessary, even if you're fleeing, and entirely irrational.

There's no reason to do it. It makes no sense. If you escape a burning building, why bar the door so others can't leave? I don't understand at all.

[geonuc]

Obviously I don't know what anyone was thinking, but I can construct a scenario in my mind that would explain the lack of abandon ship order, or more precisely, the orders to not abandon ship.

The ship capsized quickly. Prior to it becoming obvious that it would not recover from the severe list it was adopting and would soon capsize, the captain and crew might harbor legitimate hopes of stabilizing the situation. Therefore, best to have the passengers stay put. However, once the ship started to capsize, it was too late to get people off and survival instincts took over. The crew, who would mostly be above decks, abandoned ship fearing for their own lives.

That scenario does not involve any malice or recklessness. It does, however, involve a failure to perform the prime duty of ship's crew - which is to look after the safety of your wards (passengers) above all else.

Again, I have no idea what anyone was thinking.

[Sigma_Orionis]

This is was the captain has to say about it.

[FZR1KG]

I'm with geonuc on this.
Decisions viewed in hindsight may look completely incompetent but at the time may have made perfect sense.

The one thing that's got me concerned is that the vessel just sank so fast.
In this day with all the knowledge of safety at sea I can't fathom how a design for passengers can be constructed where it would fail so quickly.
30 minutes for a vessel that size is incredibly fast and means all its bulkheads have been breached.
Something is not right there. It should have floated longer in which case the initial order would have been correct.
After it listed chances are there is nothing anyone can do to help others. Stairs don't work so well near horizontally, communications could have been totally gone.
If the Captain was expecting the ship to stay afloat for hours then his response was the correct one.

As for jumping into a life raft again it all depends on the timing.
If the ship suddenly listed the only option you have is to get off or die along with everyone else.

So I'd like some more information before condemning but if it turns out the captain was totally in the wrong and went into survival mode well before he should have then yeah. Hang the fucker and I'm sure they will anyway. Given Korean culture it would probably be the best thing for him guilty or not.

[Morrolan]

according to the above BBC link the shore authorities said 5 minutes after the distress call that the order should be given to abandon ship. the captain only gave the order 30 minutes after that, when the vessel was (apparently) on its side. it took 3 hours to sink.

either way, i am confused as to why people were apparently kept inside the vessel rather than at the designated emergency stations, which, in my, admittedly limited, experience, are always on deck. the vessel only had half the maximum number of passengers on board, so no reason to think there wouldn't be enough room.

[Swift]

At least one crew member gave her life to help others.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/21/world/asia/young-sewol-crew-member/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

The number of crew members charged is rising, and so is the anger that families feel.

But there's one crew member they are leaving out: Park Jee Young, 22, who by witness accounts helped them escape and distributed life jackets -- one after the other to students -- as the stricken ferry began to sink.

When she ran out of jackets, she ran to the next floor to grab more.

When she was asked why she wasn't wearing a life jacket, Park said that crew members would be last and that she had to help others first, according to witness accounts to South Korean media.

Park now lies in a funeral home in the city of Incheon.

[FZR1KG]

according to the above BBC link the shore authorities said 5 minutes after the distress call that the order should be given to abandon ship. the captain only gave the order 30 minutes after that, when the vessel was (apparently) on its side. it took 3 hours to sink.

either way, i am confused as to why people were apparently kept inside the vessel rather than at the designated emergency stations, which, in my, admittedly limited, experience, are always on deck. the vessel only had half the maximum number of passengers on board, so no reason to think there wouldn't be enough room.

One of the funny things about maritime decisions is that usually the best person to make a call is the one that is there not one that is on the other end of the phone/HF. The captains decision was based on the high currents and the possible loss of life if they were swept out.

I understand that it took 3 hours to sink but 30 minutes is the time before it listed to its side. it should have taken a lot longer than that.

I'm not trying to excuse the captain, I'm just looking at the general rule with boats/ships that start taking water is that statistically it's safer to stay on the boat than leave it. Catastrophic events are pretty rare and hard to determine in advance. Similar to the Titanic. If the tear wasn't across all the bulk heads the best thing would have been to stay on board. Determining the extent of the damage on a large vessel isn't always easy so one looks at the circumstance and the statistics and hopes that they make the right call. Often that call just isn't able to be easily seen at the time.
Oddly my gut says that there is no reason with today's technology for there not to be simple ways to prevent such disasters for the most part and determine just how bad the damage is. I can't explain why it isn't done as it's not that much to implement the appropriate sensors compared to the cost of the vessel.
It's also the reason why I'm making the boat we're on positively buoyant to the extent that even if we take water by a breach in all the bulkheads and hulls it will not only float but stay sailable. Cost for our boat is about $600-$1000. A gps chart plotter costs more. It does however reduce the available usable volume so shipping companies aren't going to like that. They want to pack more people and cargo in rather than make the vessel unsinkable. IMHO that's a fine tactic for cargo only ships as they have small crews and are easily protected by proper life rafts. On passenger ships one needs to factor major loss of life as well since life rafts of the commercial quality (like on oil rigs) won't be cost effective.
Back in the early 1900's ships didn't even carry enough life boats for all the passengers. Today they don't factor catastrophic events as possible so any such event results in loss of life. That needs to change.
Changing the marine industry is fraught with stubborn attitudes. It took about 100 years after a catamaran won the America's cup to allow them to enter the race again. They instead condemned the cat as unsafe and banned it. That pov still exists today even while monohull owners know their vessels will sink fast after being holed and even though they argue that monohulls self right, few are actually made that will do so. Go figure.
I could go on and on about JSD's being the only proven form of device to prevent breaking wave capsize in high seas yet people insist that what they have been doing works even while boats sink that did the same thing as they are pushing. It's madness I say.

[Rommie]

So far as I can tell, there's likely something to the fact that the cargo was inappropriately lashed down so when the boat swung so much it tipped, causing the boat to list so seriously. How that translates into the boat sinking... well I'm no expert but yeah, seems a bit weird to me.

I also agree w Morrolan in that I don't get why you wouldn't tell people to go to evacuation stations. Ok, to be clear, I can understand instinctively if I'm worried the cargo in my hold is unevenly distributed my first reaction would be "nobody move!", but this just tells me that a lot of people were also probably really not trained in what to do in an emergency.

Obviously a lot of stuff had to go wrong in a chain of events here. What's disturbing is there were probably several spots where the death toll could've been minimized, but we're looking at only a third of the people making it out... one of those things that hits me more than these things usually do as such things are not supposed to happen, and it's disturbing to realize they still can.