Italian Liner Sinks - lights go out

This is covered by SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea). The lighting requirements are in this PDF:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...8KGABA&usg=AFQjCNEA0hFXXVfLl_RlHB6GF2RJh6vHcA

Tom

 

Holy Cat's I thought it was just a small cruise ship at first but it carried 4,200! Sixty nine people are still missing and two or three dead. Pity the poor off duty crew which are usually berthed in the very lowest decks!

 

Curious - the ship capsized onto the side AWAY from the breached hull. How did that happen? Unless it got breached on both sides.

Well, that Captain's lost his ticket. Hitting a submerged reef is inexcusable, like running out of gas in an airplane. Shoal water's been well plotted for centuries; that reef didn't get up to stretch its legs and sit down somewhere new.

As to lighting, I would guess at some extreme degree of list the generators and electrical apparatus would start to come off their mounts, breaking restraints not designed to take stress from such extreme angles. And/or the seawater started shorting everything out - the compartments are watertight, but if flooded the components are not waterproof.

Interesting that we still make all comparison to the most famous wreck, Titanic, even though since its demise there have been several much more lethal wrecks, including one that killed three times as many people as were lost on Titanic.

 

All the pictures here last night were of a very brightly lit ship -- several examples here: Ship aground off Italy. It wasn't until after many hours of insomnia, long after the great majority of passengers were off, that I saw the first pictures of a darkened ship.

 

Pretty sad in these days of GPS, etc.

 

Well, it is an Italian ship. Not everyone follows the standards, and sometimes backup systems are not kept in good repair. One of the chief reasons that most ships are not US flags is that our requirements are much more stringent. Liberia is a popular place to register ships since they have low taxes and lax safety requirements.

This is not unusual for groundings. The breached side is sitting on the bottom. As the ship fills with water it gets heavier and settles. The breached side is supported by the bottom, so the ship lists away from the breach.

Tom

 

they said he was way off course, that's gonna take some 'splainin.

 

The lifeboats don't seem to have been very useful, and it's not like it never occurred to anyone that a boat might list. Any idea what those standards are? Maybe they should deploy automatically when activated by getting wet. (OK, with allowances for rain and spray, but still...)

 

'Nuff said. Choose wisely when you sail. Or fly.

 

Hats off to Tom, qbee42, for providing good background data on this. :yo:

Once the ship has listed to 45º or so deploying the lifeboats can be
problematic. On the side the ship is listed, tilted towards, the lifeboats
hand away from the ship and can be difficult to board. On the uphill
side, as the lifeboats are lowered they will drag against the side of the
ship and tend to dump their contents outward.

Under SOLAS, the emergency generator is required to be located on the
main deck or above to prevent issues with internally rising water
levels, whether from flooding or overly enthusiastic fire fighting water.
Most probably any issues with the emergency generator are fuel
supply related. Possibilities include:
- the emergency generator fuel tank wasn't kept topped up
- there was more than one fuel tank to make up the required amount
and the second tank was not opened
- the fuel was not treated or changed periodically and became
contaminated with bio-sludge and clogged the filters

Of course, speculation on the loss of electrical power can go forever;
shorted emergency light or bilge pump circuit... etc, etc, and etc.

I'm afraid that this is just one more illustration that it it doesn't matter
how good/current/expensive the physical systems are, safety has as
much or probably more to do with the quality, experience, training (on-
going), and commitment of the officers and crew whether its a
passenger/cruise ship, a bulk oil tanker, or an offshore oil rig.

Same is true ashore for busses, 18 and up wheelers...
and lowly passenger cars for that matter.

Be careful out there...

FWIW, here are some non-cruise industry compiled vessel sinking data:
Cruise Bruise - Cruise Ship Sinkings and Groundings

 

Hind sight is always 20/20. I'm sure the captain is sitting in his jail cell thinking about what he did wrong. I wonder if he'll get 99 weeks of unemployment.

 

A question for Tom (qbee42) - in Aug 2000 a 500 ft. Russian sub (Kursk) sank in 350 feet of water; all hands were lost. At the time I wondered why a rescue could not be effected by simply getting three or four ships with heavy lift equipment to drop lines to the stern of the sub, grapple it and tip the sub up on end enough to get its stern above the surface, allowing any survivors to get out. The sub was later raised so lifting it was feasible. Would that idea have worked? I assumed it an obvious thing to do but politics interfered very badly in that disaster so the crew was doomed almost no matter what was tried. Anyway, I've always wondered if a rescue by upending the sub would have worked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_K-141_Kursk

On this disaster, thanks by the way for explaining why the capsize went away from the breach. Makes sense.

 

Remind. Ou of the "Queen of the North"? What was the captain and mate doing at the time of the accident?

Icarus

 

celebrating?