On Jan 30, 8:41*pm, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,

*Charles wrote:
In article , Old Sarge
wrote:

The major problem with the Concordia is one that is plagued by all ships,
not necessarily cruise ships. *When a ship lists to one side, the degree has
an effect on lifeboat deployment and in this case the list went quickly and
the lifeboats were stuck on board. *HOWEVER, even if they had had a drill
prior to departure, I doubt it would have helped as there was mass
confusion.

When the pax want to get off but the crew is saying "go back to your
cabins", your problems are bigger than merely a failure of crowd
control: the mass confusion was ultimately caused by a failure of
leadership to make the appropriate decisions in a timely fashion.


They also have the life rafts that can be used if the lifeboats can not
be dropped. I think the major problem with the evacuation on Concordia
was that it was delayed.

That was part of it. The other part was that those same safety
systems weren't able to recover (to be deployed as had been planned)
to compensate. This is a failure of robust system planning, which
permits failures to cascade from bad to worse.

For example, let's say that you did have life rafts that could be
tossed overboard after the lifeboats got hung up ... now what? Are
pax expected to then make a 50ft jump into the sea, then swim over to
get in the liferaft? Or are you going to risk having pax down near
the waterline on the "downhill" side as the ship is rolling over in
that direction? Neither option seems all that appealing when their
blunt realities are revealed.

And this one was close enough to the shore that they could used the
lifeboats as shuttles so even if 1/2 weren't deploable, the others could
have taken up the slack if * implemented early enough..

True, but that was more by luck than by design. If shuttling did
occur (sorry, I haven't personally read every detail), part of the
question that would be quite revealing would be - - "As initiated by
who?". Specifically, the point here is who was it that took
leadership in that phase of the rescue operation? And clearly, this
is big negative points if it wasn't initiated by the ship's
officers.


-hh