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  #23  
Old January 17th, 2012, 01:11 AM posted to rec.travel.cruises
Tom K
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Posts: 2,578
Default Costa Concordia taking on water off of Italy

On 1/15/12 3:41 PM, number6 wrote:

If it was human error- unacceptable


IMO - That is the only acceptable cause ... I could accept some idiot
screw up much easier than a systematic cause or errors in the
navigational charts ...


It's probably a combination of things. But not the charts.

We put our trust that things like SOLAS regulations will help provide
safety. But perhaps that trust is misplaced. Here's what SOLAS says:

---------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter II-1 – Construction – Subdivision and stability, machinery and
electrical installations.

The subdivision of passenger ships into watertight compartments so that
after damage to its hull, a vessel will remain afloat and stable.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Obviously that didn't happen in this case. The ship did NOT remain
afloat and stable. As it should have.

But thinking about it, they crash test dozens of cars to verigy that
they can withstand crashes of certain velocities. But do they test
ships the same way? Of course not.

And even if the design was initially a correctly working design on the
Carnival Destiny hull (which it might not have been), with the extra
decks and extra length added to the initial Destiny hull as it evolved,
is it still safe? Obviously something was seriously wrong. The damage,
while severe looking, was actually over a rather small area in the aft
of the ship. It's not like 75% of the hull was breached. It looks like
less than 10% of one side. Maybe 1-2 water tight compartments.

To me, that damage doesn't look major.

Given the SOLAS requirement, that ship shouldn't have sank.

I think there must be some major design issue.

Like if there were no water tight compartments in that area.
Like if the doors didn't close if the area had them.
Like if there was no redundant electrical system and the primary (or
only) system was compromised with the damage.
Like if the system didn't work automatically, and a crew member had to
close the water tight doors, and didn't do it.

There is a LOT of explaining to do. By a lot of people. And you wonder
if it will just get covered up. Or if an organization like the NTSB or
maybe the US Coast Guard will be allowed to really figure out what went
wrong. There are a lot of ships since Destiny that have been built on
that platform. We need proof that there isn't a major design flaw in
that fleet of ships.

--Tom