CostaSmurfette

A pax on a ship (ferry or cruise) can do a personal risk assessment by checking the evacuation route(s), checking/practicing lifejacket condition/wearing and FEEL that they will be OK in an emergency.

The crew around you can be trained to the highest levels, they can be drilled countless times and know the ship that they are sailing aboard like the back of their hands.

BUT....

Nobody...NOBODY....knows what any of us will be like in a REAL emergency. You hope that everyone will be able to cope with everything that is thrown at you in an emergency situation, that we will all keep a calm head and that all that personal risk assessment and practice will work faultlessly and we will all get off that ship fit and well.

All the personal risk assessment and all the training in the world won't save your life if the fear consumes you....the question that you have to ask is not whether you know where the evacuation route(s) are but can we control that fear which will try to overtake all senses, all logical thinking and all that training and checking and practice.

If the answer is "I don't know"...or "I hope so"....then you could be in trouble along with anyone around you.

Even seasoned professionals get scared...it is down to how you handle that fear that will ultimately decide if you live or die.

Schettino made a few errors of judgement that night, but his downfall came not only as a result of those errors but the fact that he could not control his fear. His fear consumed him....and all the training in the world would not have prepared him or those around him for those perfectly natural emotions.

He didn't keep a calm head, he was paralysed with fear...and there by the grace of God go every single one of us cos until we experience something like that night ourselves, no-one can ever foretell how they would react in that situation.

Which is where psychological checks would help in the choices of senior officers and crew.....being qualified is only half the job, they must be able to conquer that fear in all situations otherwise, like Schettino, those officers and crew are about as much use as a chocolate frog sat on a hot radiator....they are useless to their crew and the pax.

Sid

 

Which cruise line and ship ?????

IIRC Sidari was aboard MSC Poesia.

Oh an just a thought, Uniall, since you are slightly hung up on the bad apple captain....maybe you can, with your experience, give us your insight on how to spot a bad apple....

Chicago in the 1980's made the worldwide media due to having several bad apples within its police force...corruption was the byword...so...just how do you tell a good cop and a bad cop just by looking at them, they have the same training as each other, they pass the same entry exams as each other and have the same credentials as each other....

But how exactly is the bloke in the street meant to figure out which would give you a helping hand and which would only give you a helping hand so long as you paid him/her a couple hundred dollars....did they advertise, perhaps?

Just as with the bent coppers....having a bad apple captain is not easy to see until he or she gets into difficulties and then you find out exactly who the bad apple is...don't you? ;)

Of course there are limits to how far you can go on safety. There are many safety improvements that could be brought in now, without impacting on the passengers in any way. I have never seen a crew exercise where half a dozen wheelchair passengers present themselves to be carried up the stairs to the boat deck, but that would be the situation in a real emergency.

 

And of course one of the finest safety measures would be to stop employing idiots as captains!!

 

David.

Several posts back I suggested that perhaps those who have disabilities or who are elderly/infirm be treated as if the drill was a real emergency...as you say, be met by their allocated crew as per current SOLAS and carried up or down stairs to their respective muster stations/lifeboats. But then I was greeted with derision for suggesting such a thing....despite the fact that if cruise lines did introduce this system into their drills, not only would it allow those pax to be aquainted with the crew and vice versa, but it would enable those pax to be aware of what to expect should a real emergency happen. By experiencing such actions, the fear of the unknown element would be eliminated almost completely, albeit granted that they would still be understandably fearful as that is only natural and to be expected but they would also know what will be done to help them and by who.

As for the idiot captains...well...if someone with the Master's ticket comes to an employer with a good (on paper) track record and references...there is no way of telling as to the mental or physical capabilities of that person. On paper they are perfect for the job...but in reality....? No guarantees on that without extensive psychological work-ups being done on a regular basis and even that won't weed out all of the bad apples.

There is no hard and fast way to find a bad captain...until the chips are down and they perform their duties abysmally. You can train them to be the best but that does not ever guarantee that they will not crumble under pressure.

However, the industry needs to learn from this with regard to accountability, training and holding realistic drills. Here is a question:

How many cruiselines have actually conducted a full scale vessel evacuation drill? Morgan Stanley did before 911 and that saved hundreds of their employees in the south tower.

Having a full capacity drill would be the ideal plan...however...as with airlines there again lies a flaw.

An airliner is expected to be evacuated within 90 seconds and on occasions when a real emergency occurs, such as the China Airlines flight 120 at Okinawa in 2007, that 90 second timeline works to perfection.

The problem with the 90 second evacuation timing is that when the timeline was originally set and subsequently practiced on a regular basis by all airlines, they use a plane load of crew dressed in tracksuits and trainers, no duty free or hand luggage. So as much as the evacuation drill is real, it is far from being realistic since there is no real pressure to get off the plane, no anxiety, everyone knows that it is JUST a drill.

So if you then shift that exercise to a cruise ship, organise a full evacuation drill using all boats and rafts and with a full compliment of "pax" and crew, you are inevitably going to get a similar scenario to that of a full practice drill currently carried out on a plane...relatively orderly, no panic, no confusion, no excess baggage, no-one running back to their cabins to get things, people using elevators and so forth.

Some might say that a full capacity drill is not practical on a ship with 4000+ people on board....and it certainly would not be realistic either unless the ship was allowed to tilt over using ballast to ensure that one side of the lifeboat selection was essentially null and void...or some other obstacle was placed in the way of the "pax" and crew getting off....as was the case with Concordia.

That said, last week a full capacity drill was done on a ferry in the Baltic...granted no pax but the entire crew were shown how to use the newly fitted liferafts that have tubes to fall down from the boat deck to the raft below. Several crew broke arms and legs whilst going down the shute into the raft and the drill was called off.

So ideally the full evacuation would be something to consider, however the sheer practicality side of things precludes any real chance of it happening anytime soon....not to mention that, as with the ferry last week, even drills can go wrong and having crew and/or pax injured during the drill would be very costly both in time and compensation.

Glad you are enjoying Vicky...and posh frock nights ;)

Sadly Goldryder was banned last year for defending a crewmember who was being "got at" on another part of CC, so she isn't around anymore unfortunately.

Enjoy the rest of the cruise :)

Maybe another aspect of change...some might say another common sense measure...would be to cease fast tracking officer promotions.

Gone are the times where a ship's Master took years to get to that position after working years through the ranks. Nowadays it seems that promotions are being handed out a little too quickly perhaps...so that these new "Masters" are placed in charge too soon and without any insight into their character traits or their real abilities under pressure.

Afterall...just cos these people have passed their exams doesn't make them great Masters...that comes with many years experience and you never stop learning.

With the rush of building cruise ships one after the other so fast in recent years, the urge to make more Masters has been a priority, and the temptation would have been there to fast track individuals who have the right training, passed the right exams and worked perfectly fine under mentorship...but when it comes to "going solo" have been found to be inadequate.

Schettino appears to be such a case.

He was a Safety Officer on a ship that I sailed aboard in 2008 and again in 2010...he "appeared" competant but then in that level he probably was cos he wasn't making any "final" decisions as such, he reported to the Master.

He passed his exams, played the right tunes as/when required and impressed his mentor's enough to be promoted in a relatively short space of time. He was deemed "Master material".

But then when he WAS made Master, cracks started to appear....such as the leaving Marseille in full Mistral storm 3 weeks before the ultimate error of judgement aboard Concordia.

Whisperings and mumblings from other crew about him being flighty and a risk taker...sailing the ship like it was a Ferrari.

So...the question is why these very valid observations by his peers were either ignored or went unreported to management...was it a case of "well, he'll calm down eventually, he is a new master, the novelty will go soon enough"...."bah...no worries...he hasn't damaged the ship or hurt anyone, we ahev all taken risks...don't worry about it".

Had these indiscretions by him been noted and acted upon, then chances are we would not be having this concersation now, Concordia would still be in service and all would be fine and dandy with the world.

But they were not taken notice of and a man who on paper had all the right qualifications and all the right levels of enthusiasm and respect from those around him was allowed to go on his merry way and it ended up in tragedy.

He was fast tracked....how many other Masters have been fast tracked....not just in Costa but industry wide...how many more Schettino's are there out there...you can bet your sweet life there will be others and it is only a matter of time before another Master with all the right credentials on paper but who is mentally and physically unable to carry the responsibility required by a Master.

The maritime unions are welcoming the new safety policies but they want more...they want alot more than lip service and a little bit of mascara to make the cruise industry "look" the part.

You can train a man or woman to have the finest qualifications and credentials that make them the highest of the high in their profession....but if that person does not have the mental and physical capacity to do the job right and to carry the responsibility to its fullest extent, then all the qualifications and credentials are worthless.

The only way to find out if that man or woman is "the right stuff" is to have them slowly work up through the ranks, have them checked out, have their abilities under pressure measured and watch them evolve from just another officer to someone who can mentally and physically take the responsibility onto their shoulders even under the worst of circumstances.

This is where Schettino failed abysmally....and his promotions leading to Master should not have happened, he was totally unready for the responsibility. He was fine when he could pass the buck but when the buck stopped at him, he collapsed.

And there is no way on this earth that he is the only Master who has the potential to collapse when everything falls apart.

It is not a fault of his training per se...more a case of promotion and fast tracking without truly knowing the capabilities of that individual...he looked the part, he passed the exams but that does not make him a Master in the true sense.

I just don't understand why some people think the whole industry must be changed because of one person. /QUOTE]

 

Forget for the moment the captain. Of course he was the cause, as should be shown eventually when the Itallian legal system gets round to it, though it is likely others will be implicated as well. The fact is the ship capsized and people died. It may be amusing to mock safety changes but those unfortunates who died because they were sent to their cabins to "collect life jacket, put on a hat, warm clothing and collect any medicines they take" are not laughing are they.

 

Really you couldn't make it up, how much safer is it to have all life jackets stored at the muster points so people can go quickly to get off the ship if needed. Even this measure doesn't go far enough: the practice of assembling everyone together in a theatre rather than close to their boats is asking for trouble.

 

A cruise ship sailing on the ocean is sailing in a potentially hazardous environment, how long do you think you would survive swimming in the Atlantic in January? The shambles on the Concordia shows that getting thousands safely off a ship is nothing like the passengers boat drill.

 

The new measures are hardly "the whole industry being changed"and will not impact on passengers in any way. But as we all know ships don't ever capsize, so why bother.

 

David.

 

When you consider just how outdated the SOLAS rules are in regard to lifejacket storage and evacuation drills actually are....it is even more of a miracle that over 4000 people got off the ship that night.

 

These changes...and there are many of them being voluntarily introduced via the CLIA and ECC....will be formally ratified by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in May 2013 but even then, it could take another 2 years for those changes to be written rules that all cruise lines will be mandated to comply with.

 

Two years is too long tween presentation, ratification and being made mandatory by law.

 

How many other cruise ships belonging to the huge number of operators will still be using the old rules and not even bothing to use the voluntarily produced rules by virtue of the fact that they are not affiliated with either the CLIA or ECC?

 

How many bodybags does it take for an industry to wake up and get their house in order...ans why does it take bodybags for an industry to even consider itself to be a risk to life?

 

These changes are standard, common sense changes...nothing remotely difficult or expensive...they should have been in place at the last SOLAS update in 2010, if not 1987 or even before that.

 

A full list of the 10 (so far) common sense but upto now ignored cos of the "it'll never happen to us" mindset can be found here....it makes interesting reading and may leave a few scratching heads as to why these things haven't been though of before now...

 

http://www.cruising.org/regulatory/clia-policy-common-elements-musters-and-emergency-instructions

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/bridge-access-policy

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/excess-lifejackets-policy

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/bridge-procedures

 

http://www.cruising.org/regulatory/life-boat-loading-training-purposes-policy

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/lifejacket-stowage

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/cruise-industry-policies/passage-planning-policy

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/cruise-industry-policies/passenger-muster-policy

 

http://www.cruising.org/regulatory/clia-policy-recording-nationality-passengers

 

http://www.cruising.org/index.php?q=regulatory/heavy-objects

 

So...to say that changes made after the event would not change the industry is incorrect. The above have all been taken on board by all cruise lines voluntarily. Although they are all to be presented to the IMO in May, sadly there is no guarantee that they will be accepted in part or completely.

 

A couple of the policies do indeed cover the bridge crew...so they are not left out of this equation.

 

It is frightening that cruise lines have not complied with these common sense policies before Concordia....but as has been said, industries tend not to do everything that they can to make their products and services as safe as possible until bodybags are required and then they play the innocent and/or complacent card.

 

Usually it works but not this time...this time the cruise industry has been caught out...this time there are past fatal accidents that can be shown to have set new levels of policy making which the cruise lines simply ignored.

Uniall...we really are not so different in what we want to see come out of all this mess.

All that is important at this stage is that the truth be found, any and all parties involved (regardless as to how big a part they played) admit and accept responsibility for what happened...and for the entire cruise industry - from the smallest to the biggest operators - all take whatever recommendations and rule changes are brought about as a result of the loss of Concordia and implement them, regardless of financial cost, and do their absolute damnedest to make sure that this never happens again...ever.

You cannot guaranatee that accidents will not happen in the future but you can make sure that you do everything possible to prevent it from happening again.

The ferry industry have come up in leaps and bounds since 1987....and until Concordia, the cruise industry had it relatively easy, they have existed without too many bodybags being needed.....now is their chance to bring about cruise ships and crews that are as safe as they can possibly be.

You say that I am "touchy feely" over this accident...well I have good reason to be.

In 1987 I was working as a driver, taking heavy goods vehicles to and from the UK and going to Budapest on a regular route. On March 6, 1987 I was on my way home, the traffic was awful and I arrived in Zeebrugge ferry port just as the ramps and ropes were sorted on the ferry I had been booked to catch, so I had to wait for the next one.

The ferry that I missed by minutes was Herald of Free Enterprise...within minutes of the ferry leaving port, she capsized killing over 160 people....2 of them were friends and coworkers of mine.

I should have been on that ferry but I wasn't...and I have been passionate about safety on ships ever since and I have always wondered why, when I boarded cruise ships owned by Cunard, P&O, Costa, Olsen, NCL why items like piano's were not attached to the deck, why the lockers containing lifejackets were so small at the muster stations...when after Herald, the ferries were required to make these small but important changes....

I have another friend, I shall be meeting her in Barcelona next month, she was due to join Concordia a few days prior to the accident as crew....by (mis)fortune, she missed embarkation due to a tummy bug....

This why I am so passionate about how these ships are designed, how they are built, how the crews are trained and how the cruise industry seems to have such a high opinion of itself that it doesn't think that rules that were brought in after Herald doe not apply to them.

So I apologise if my passion gets in the way of your bloodlust, Uniall....but to me, the bigger picture is a much more realistic and frightening image than the mistakes one just one man in a very big industry.

And that is exactly the wide divergence of opinion between you and me from the beginning. You insist that "after the fact" intervening factors are what caused the deaths. Whereas, my use of Aristollian/Thomistic logic proves the efficient cause of the deaths were the decisions of an arrogant egomaniacal Captain. Take him out of the equation and there would have been no collision and no need to abandon ship.

How can you be so certain about that though?

Did you behave in the same way when two died aboard Sea Diamond in 2007 when she hit rocks off Thira and sank?

I have never said that the captain on Concordia was an innocent party, is was not in any way innocent...HOWEVER...there are many other factors that were involved that night, such as the lack of a working depth sounder, an intermittant radar fault, poor bridge communication tween several officers and crew...ALL of which contributed to what happened.

That does not mean, however, that the cruise industry as a whole should be let off the hook. The industry has made errors, they have been complacent by not making sure that changes that were meant for every passenger ship afloat were implemented if not bettered.

I totally understand your desire to hang draw and quarter the captain...but by doing that, you should also question the industry as a whole as to why an industry allowed a ship to sail with defects, why the industry as a whole seems to have somewhat questionable crew training standards, why the industry as a whole appeared to think that 160+ lives lost through basic negligence and lack of care in a ferry capsize and the changes thereafter DID NOT apply to them too.

Yes, the captain made mistakes but he should not be the only defendent in the dock...the cruise industry should also be held responsible for the failings of that night....that accident was the culmination of decades of make do and mend, the use of minimum standards instead of taking standards to the maximum and it was an inevitable event...and as always, its the innocents who pay the ultimate price of a company/organisation/industry complacency.

This was an accident waiting to happen...lessons were not learned after Herald of Free Enterprise and the crew deficiencies that killed 160+ people....now maybe, hopefully...the cruise industry will catch up with the ferry industry and act as a whole in a more responsible manner towards its customers and its crews and provide them with the tools and training that they require UNDER LAW to run a business properly and safely.

If they don't.....well...we will have another cruise ship foundering and next time the figures could be a whole lot worse.

There's one sure fire way to increase passenger safety on Costa Cruise Lines.

 

Appoint the Sicilian Mafia as the official "Italian Maritime Safety Administration."

 

Las Vegas, NV had the lowest crime rate when the Chicago "Oufit" ran the casinos. Trouble makers and criminals just disappeared in the desert ............ :p

Uniall....this is not just Costa Crociere...the lack of enforcement of adaptations and rules set out after Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 is rampant across the ENTIRE cruise industry.

Concordia was the accident they all said would not happen, the cruise industry assumed that a cruise ship would never capsize for any reason...how compacent can one industry get?

Cruise ships have been living on borrowed time for decades...it was only a matter of time before one of the big ships foundered, it could have happened to ANY of the ships belonging to ANY of the cruise lines....it was bound to happen eventually, just a question of when and not if.

And it will happen again unless the entire cruise industry start pulling their corporate acts together and start complying with rules to the fullest of their requirements instead of just the bare minimum requirements.

Trouble is...compliance costs money and expenditure means higher fares....but like I already said, I would hazard a guess that most who cruise would prefer sailing on a 100% functioning ship, with a properly trained crew and with ALL safety recommendations in place if not bettered and pay a higher fare for that...rather than take a chance on what has been floating around the oceans since 1987 with scant regard to the rules imposed after 160+ died in shallow water in Zeebrugge harbour when their ferry capsized.

What would YOU rather do.....pay more and know that you are safe, or stay as it has been and take a chance?

A child could have worked this one out, though it only applies to new builds (why) And why did it take Concordia to decide it wasn't really a good idea to allow boat drill to take place after sailing.

 

An intelligent brain walking round a ship doing basic risk assessment could potentially save lives in the future. Why is the cruise industry so far behind shore based industry?

 

David.

David.....after the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in Zeebrugge harbour in 1987 killing over 160 people and was blamed on poor crew interaction and not helped by the crewman who should have ensured that the bow doors were closed being asleep in his cabin....various measures were introduced that included the extra large lifejacket boxes with extra lifejackets at the muster stations, the locking down of all heavy objects such as piano's so that they did not go flying across a public area in stormy weather or in a listing event, they also required ships to refrain from using decorative glass partitions/doors within passenger/crew areas since they too can be lethal if someone falls through it, they also brought in stacks of other design changes and crew training changes....

BUT....

For some unknown reason the cruise lines decided that despite these new rules encompassing PASSENGER ships....almost none of it was ever introduced on cruise ships. The ferry companies, on the other hand, introduced all aspects immediately.

So one has to ask what the difference is tween a ferry and a cruise ship....?

Both carry passengers but only one complies with design and training rules formulated in 1987 after a similar capsize event to Concordia in 2012.....seems the cruise industry needs to catch up a tiny bit, eh?

And answer why the entire cruise industry did not adopt the rules that the ferry companies did when required to do so?

I spose that old enemy, COMPLACENCY, reared its ugly head once more, afterall Herald was a ferry...a cruise ship could NEVER capsize, could it?

Smurfette, You are heavily defensive of the captain and have brought up some valid points about deficencies in the bridge management, but I have read every single article that has been published about this event, and haven't read one fact that points to a ship problem causing the sinking of this ship.

 

It seems obvious to me that the captain unintentionally steered it directly into the path of the rocks.

 

It seems to me he was repeatedly recorded lying to the Coast Guard about the severity of the issue.

 

It seems to me that he was informed early on that three sections of the ship had been breached and that the ship was unable to stay afloat at that point.

 

I'm sure the captain will plead his case durng his trial and if there is any evidence that exonerates him from responsibility for the sinking of the Concordia and the complete failure to give orders to abandon ship in a timely manner, then we will learn the whole truth then.

 

But for now, I have to believe that as captain of the ship, Schettino made a grievous error in judgment that directly led to the sinking of the ship.

 

That said, I hope he gets a fair trial and the whole story will come out. I'd love to know what he and the Concordia officials were discussing over the phone directly after the rocks were hit.

I have never exonerated Francesco Shettino, he DID make errors of judgement both on the bridge and during evacuation...

However...

Accidents do not have a singular causal factor, they happen due to a number of different causal factors that come together to create havoc.

All the focus was thrown purposely onto the human behind the controls within 24 hours of the accident...before anyone had a chance to take in what had occurred that night. The media acted, and still acts, in an abominable way by spreading innuendo and incorrect information (such as the water rushing down Carnival Sensation's stairs and alledging it to be Concordia).

Carnival Corp have first and final say, they afterall own Costa Crociere.

The reaction to blame the human element within that 24 hours was very well orchestrated to take away any doubt about the condition of the ship AND any potential design issues that may or may not have contributed to the accident and the deaths/injuries that occurred.

Any and all design flaws will be heavily scrutinised, just as the technological defects that were known about the ship in the weeks and months leading upto the accident that went unrepaired and the actions of the various port authorities that allowed the ship to sail with those technological defects in place.

The main reason for Carnival Corp distancing the focus from the ship is the massive cost involved in dealing with the design flaws and defects that are likely to have been repeated across its entire fleet of 100 ships...and the rest of the cruise corporations will also be watching the outcome since many ships across all lines have similar technology and design features to that found on Concordia.

One of the new changes announced last week about fastening down heavy items like piano's so that in rough weather or during a listing event they do not turn into missiles frankly is astounding since that rule was introduced to ferries back in 1987 after Herald of Free Enterprise capsized killing over 160 people. The fasten down heavy objects rule came in shortly thereafter and was meant to be for all passenger ships....though now it seems that the cruise industry decided that for reasons best known to themselves that the rule did not apply to them.

The full report into Concordia will take months, maybe years to extrapolate, there are so many different angles and causal factors to investigate.

Francesco Shettino and his bridge crew are just tiny pieces of a much larger jigsaw and its the larger and wider jigsaw pieces that will have the biggest impact on cruising...both in technology and training used on the ships and in their ultimate design and build. Any retrofitting demanded by the IMO in the wake of what is found that does affect existing ships and those in the process of being built will be passed to the customer by way of raised fares.

Tbh, I would rather pay a higher fare and know that the ship and crew are 100% fit for purpose than pay cheap fares and just live in the hope that everyone and everything works and knows what they are doing.

Look we all know the ship had a few issues and was in need of some repair. I expect him to elaborate on what was wrong with it. The point is, he took the ship off its course. Had the ship stayed its scheduled course, we would not be having this discussion.

The ship had serious issues that people are apathetic towards....just how safe is the cruise ship that YOU will be stepping aboard next?

It's all very well focussing on the human element....Carnival Corp handed that to you on a silver platter cos it SUITED them to do so...steering you away from the ship issues (both her design and the vitally important equipment that failed prior to that night that was due to be dealt with in Savona and during the next cruise).

Carnival Corp, Royal Caribbean Group and all the rest of the cruise industry WANT people to focus on the human element cos they know full well that ANY design or equipment failures will inevitably lead to changes and those changes will be forced retrofitted onto their existing fleets and incorporated into every newbuild and that costs MONEY!

The cruise industry is the same as any other industry, it revolves around MONEY...the more they can get their mitts on, the better for them...the last thing any of the cruise lines want to do is be forced into spending money putting right design flaws and upgrading their equipment.

For decades ships have been growing in size and complexity but their basic equipment has largely not grown with them....instead of growing the ship plus the equipment and thus inbuilding more redundancy into the systems they have squeezed every last drop out of the same technology time and time again.

Think of it as a rubber band...stretch it, keep stretching it and eventually it will snap. In many ways Concordia was the cruise industry's 9/11...they did not think a ship of her size would or could ever founder, just as those agencies who took care of US security never thought anyone would or could fly aircraft into buildings.

New policies were announced within the last week...basic common sense policies that til Concordia had been ignored...

Fasten down heavy objects like piano's so that they do not turn into lethal weapons rolling across the lounges when a ship lists over too far.

Improve bridge resource management so that bridge crews who routinely swap tween different designs of ship in the same fleet are 100% au fait with those ships.

Have larger lifejacket lockers at the muster stations to enable passengers to get them without having to return to their cabins as per the original SOLAS instructions required.

These changes are being brought in voluntarily, they will be presented to the IMO and hopefully ratified along with the rest of the passenger ship safety recommendations in May 2013.

Bottom line is that no changes EVER come about until there are sufficient numbers of bodybags. Concordia snapped the cruise industry into life and out of their complacent little cocoon and she did it is a tragic and wholly preventable way...not just by the human element involved but by the very design and technology used.

What about on-shore elevators in the event of earthquakes.

 

Highlighting the above...

On-shore elevators in buildings...whether they are the old fully enclosed shaft system or the single track/suspended glass type are packed full of safety equipment and a recognised escape route...

However....

Elevators on land are built within the strongest part of the building, often the core, where the structures around them are significantly stronger than the outside walls....a classic example of a core that failed was WTC...it took alot to force that core to fail but it showed that the core that encloses the elevators can and will collapse under certain conditions and in certain circumstances.....the designers and architects never imagined having to build into a core the ability to withstand two airliners cutting them in half, it just wasn't considered a possibility.

Likewise the use of glass elevators on a ship...the designers and architects had never anticipated a ship to flop over onto its side like Concordia did. The design of the glass elevator pods are identical to those that you can find on buildings but the difference being that a ship can and will drop over given the right set of circumstances. Just as the WTC collapse made architects have a sharp intake of breath when their tried and tested design failed, the same will no doubt have happened at Kone (who provide many of the glass elevators found on cruise ships across several cruise lines).

There is no way out of a glass pod elevator....yes, you have a hatch on the roof but once out there, where do you go when the top 5 decks are semi-enclosed in one huge shiny atrium and the lower 5 decks are wide open landings that are often almost the full width of the ship?

Eyewitness accounts from passengers escaping Concordia's atrium landings stated that at least three people were in the glass elevators when Concordia commenced her list and they could be heard screaming for help.

Those passengers in the elevator(s) would most likely have been in them before the power outtage...since there was no notice that the power was going to fail and the elevators are automatically dropped from the power grid in an emergency situation leading to emergency gensets kicking in.

Buildings are designed to stay upright, those built in earthquake zones are built with extra strength in the cores for emergency evacuation via stairs that run around the enclosed elevator shafts...it is basic construction 101. It is only when something like WTC's collapse comes along that all those well rehearsed and well thought out and previously safe design ideas get tossed off the drawingboard.

Ships move...they tip over...until Concordia's accident, none had tipped over to and beyond the point of no return...and that event showed that glass elevators have design flaws that could potentially cost lives. At this stage, no-one knows what happened to the three passengers seen and heard inside the glass elevator(s) that night...hopefully they were able to get out before the list became too acute.

Barante....Victoria has two sisters, both sail for a US formatted cruise line and are equally as popular as Victoria....they are Norwegian Sun and Norwegian Sky.

Victoria was the last newbuild under the original Costa Crociere that was not a Carnival design. The cookie cutter designs came out with Costa Atlantica & Costa Mediterranea (aka Carnival Spirit class).

Victoria is a beautiful and unfussy and unglitzy ship....with the equivalent space of 3 football fields as sun deck area, it would be very difficult for her to get crowded up top on a sunny day.

She was built in Germany and it shows in the quality of materials used. Oh and that flickering, she is just letting everyone know that she is alive (she can, and does, have the occasional 20 minute tantrum...like she did last year on the way back from Argentina).

Victoria (and the late Allegra) will always be my personal favourites out of the fleet. Vicky has the feel of an ocean liner, with space to move unhindered by revenue opportunities.

Oh and don't forget to try the stern balcony areas, especially at sailaway...fantastic views from there. Go to the very end of the cabin corridors at the stern, there are doors "crew access", passengers can go out there and they give amazing views. In bad weather you can shelter at either end where the superstructure of the ship offers a covered area...oh and smokers, you can out there, they have ashtrays. I spent many hours out on deck 8's stern rail, the Italian flag shared my space when in port and on sea days it was a lovely place to stand and watch the wake....not many people realise that you can go out there, so it is usually very peaceful :)

Vampire Parrot.....

Maybe you can clarify something, please.

If there is a known problem with equipment that is a part of the MEL, is the cruise line or crew legally obliged to notify the port authorities of that problem or not?

Or is it a case that the crew can notify the cruise line who then arrange for suitable repairs to be carried out at a later date, or if significant enough, repairs at the next available port?

Reason for asking is if these equipment failures were known about after leaving Savona, Marseille, Barcelona and/or Civitaveccia and the port authority(ies) had been informed, would that place some level of responsibility onto those port authorities for not placing a "no sail" order on Concordia....and thus a percentage of blame, albeit relatively small, for what happened?

According to the Paris-MoU website, Concordia was last inspected in Valletta on April 15, 2011 and no deficiencies were found. Her two previous inspections in Lisbon and Rhodes also were clean sheets - as you would expect for a ship of her age.

The inspection in Valletta covered :

Inspected Areas

 

Accommodation and galley

Engine room

Navigation bridge

Outside decks and forecastle

Passenger spaces

Steering room

http://www.parismou.org/inspection_efforts/inspections/inspection_database_search/

That sort of narrows down when the failures of equipment happened to just over 8 months, she was due another inspection in late March/early April 2012 had she not foundered. Obviously things break down on a regular basis and it can happen at any time, I am just enquiring as to whether or not there is any obligation to report deficiencies or defects in the MEL to port authorities....and if not....do you think there should be an obligation to notify at least the next port of call in the event of an en-route failure?

I'm not going to directly answer all of CostaSMurfette's questions but I would like to make a few points that some people may find informative.

 

Ships do have a MEL. However something failing after you sail which means you no longer meet the MEL does not necessarily mean you must return immediately to port.

 

The same principal applies to aircraft. For example if you are in a 747-400 flying from say San Francisco to London Heathrow and an engine fails one hour into the flight, it is still safe and legal to carry on to London. You still have more redundency that you would if you were flying a fully-functional 767.

 

All elevators on board ships are designed for ships, not for buildings.

 

All passenger areas on a modern ship have at least two seperate well signposted/highly visible exit routes They may involve going through doors marked "for emergency use only".

 

Horizontally closing watertight doors do not let significant amounts of water through once they are closed.

 

If you want to read an example of really poor bridge resource management, go to the maib website at www dot maib dot gov dot uk, search for K wave and read the report.

 

VP

Thank you VP.

In relation to the MEL....since no-one as yet knows when the depth sounder failed along with other equipment that was not 100% functional, would the authorities in Barcelona or Civitavecchia be held accountable for the MEL not being complete and thus it would be their responsibility to hold the ship in port til repairs had been made - assuming that the depth sounder (at least) was not functioning?

The airline MEL would ground a plane if the CVR and/or the FDR were not functioning 100% (this was the case of the Spanair MD80 a few years back, it was fixed but the plane then went on to crash on take-off anyway). So aside from the already unserviceable depth sounder - which is safety related and thus should be in the MEL - having the BVR/BDR not fully functional, or at least intermittantly faulty as in the case of Concordia, that surely should also impede the MEL?

If the depth sounder IS included in the MEL, could the operator (in this case Costa Crociere) make some form of guarantee to repair at another port in order for the ship to sail....ie, the fact that the repair crew were waiting at Savona for the 14 January arrival, would that have allowed the ship to sail with an incomplete MEL?

In relation to the signage for escape routes....as much as I would agree that there is generally ample signage around the ship, it isn't always large or noticeable, especially in areas that would normally be for crew access use only. And in the half light of emergency power settings, signage is not always illuminated and in many cases the signage itself is frequently the same colour as the door or wall that it is attached to...ie...tan coloured walls or door with crean coloured signage. Would you agree that improvements could be made in making the signage clearer, especially on decks that are cut by galleys etc and even more especially where foreign languages are the standard have the signage easier to comprehend?

I want to know when the depth sounder failed.....was it before or after leaving Barcelona on the ill fated cruise?

I want to know if ships (all ships, not just pax ships) have a minimum equipment list in regard to such items as fully functioning radar, depth sounders etc...a case of sail/no-sail (identical to that already in place with pax aircraft, fly/no-fly list or MEL that can ground an airliner if any of a set number of vital equipment is unserviceable).

I want to know if the phone call PRIOR to the course change was from Palombo on Giglio...if so...potentially a conversation could be :

Palombo : "so...are you coming over tonight?"

Schettino : "we have no depth sounder, I am not sure it is such a good idea"

Palombo : "don't be silly, its a calm, clear night, what could go wrong?"

Schettino : " oh...I do not know...I am not comfortable with it, the ship is not right..."

Palombo : " oh for goodness sakes, don't be such a wimp...bring the ship over, you know how much pull I have with the boss, it would be good karma for you to come see your mentor"

Schettino : "hmmm...OK...but I am not happy about it"

Palombo : "look...if anything happens, I'll be right behind you...now will you come?"

Schettino : "OK...I'll do it...but I am not happy about it...see you later"

I want to know how much pull Palombo had on present captains, in view that he trained so many of them and apparently turned a blind eye to anything remotely questionable and seemed to place pressure on anyone who wasn't happy to go along with his requests...this I know happened after discussions with crew, a case of "do it and your future will be bright".

I want to know why glass elevators that were designed for use on buildings ever got certification for use on ships when they have no means of escape in a listing event, were they even tested for such events?

I want to know why cruise ship designers & builders insist of cutting stem to stern pax/crew access over several decks by placing galleys and other inaccessable areas within public areas of the ship...thus cutting escape routes and adding confusion in a panicked situation such as a listing event.

I want to know why watertight doors close horizontally when it is well known that they relax during power outtages and can let water egress occur under slight water pressure.

I want to know why so much money is spent on making the ship visually "pretty" to pax and such little attention is paid on basic evacuation routing and facilities. (I believe that as with Titanic, the cruise industry never believed that there would ever be a large ship loss and as such, no forward planning was built into ship design...it was a case of bigger is better, the more glitz and neon the better and don't worry about accidents cos they will never happen.)

I want to know why there was an apparent lack of bridge resource management...why did no-one question the actions or instructions being given during the run up to the course change and after the event....especially since it was known that the ship was not 100% fully functional.

Finally....if nothing was wrong with the ship and it was all down to human error...why was there a full repair crew waiting for the ship in Savona who were to board and complete an array of critical equipment repairs during that day and during the next cruise?

To me, looking at the technical aspects, the throwing under the bus less than 24 hours after the event appears to have come from Miami and not Genova. It was a cynical way of diverting attention from several issues surrounding the ship that would have inevitable knock-on effects to the rest of the ships of that design/build and potentially every large cruise ship across the industry. It is always easier to blame the human.....Schettino and others DID make errors, they DID react badly and they certainly could/should have done better...BUT...the ship's own participation needs closer scrutiny and so far, it is not getting that scrutiny...and they only reason for that is money...if the ship is bad, it will cost billions to put right the issues on the rest of the ships like her.

But how many people get in a lift knowing this- lift stops, lights go out, panic builds up leading to hysteria. They don't know whether the ship is sinking or if this is just a temporary power cut. After half an hour they want out so start to exit through the escape hatch. Of course if they knew that the power would not be resorted this would relatively safe, but if as is most likely this is just a power outage and in the pitch dark no one had contacted them?

 

It took the Concordia disaster to force ships to hold the drill before sailing, could it also force the installation of emergency lift backup.

David.

Take it one step further, replace the glass elevators with standard enclosed ones. At least then if the ship tips over like Concordia did, anyone inside the elevators would have a fighting chance of escape via the enclosed elevator shaft instead of potentially hanging in mid-air and with no-where to go, as is the case with the current glass elevator design.

And to those who say it cannot be done, I believe that the HAL Vista 1 & Vista 2 ships have classic enclosed elevators in their atriums, not the glitzy glass ones as per many of the Costa, Carnival fleet and the Royal Caribbean etc ships.

OK so the classic enclosed elevators are not so fancy, they don't give the WOW factor like the glass elevators do...but the issues connected to a ship with these elevators ever having such a serious accident that it would be left on its side wasn't thought about when these things were on the drawing boards...it cannot have been thought of, otherwise a safe evacuation procedure/design would have been incorporated into them somehow.

But then that would have added costs...just as Sidari commented, the safety attachments that could be installed do not appear to have been.

It would be interesting to see what the various cruise lines who routinely use this type of elevator actually think of them after the Concordia....and whether pax across the lines would think twice about using them in future too...afterall, if the power goes out for any reason, as Balf says, it could bring on panic, moreso if the weather is rough and the ship is all over the place when the power goes.

It's all very well having these pretty elevators...but they ain't alot of good when they are disabled and the ship is on its side...there is NO escape from them and NO-ONE will be there to get you out.

If and i say If the people involved were not mobile enough to climb then that may well be a reason that they perished, once the trap door was open there would be an opportunity for able bodied people to climb the Lift car running guide which would be your Floor! once at the next landing they would have been able to release the Lobby/Hallway doors with the Inside release handle that is assuming they are there on ship installed lifts.

 

Schindler make quite a lot of Lifts/Elevators that are on cruise ships and ceratinly the enclosed ones.

Most of those who use the elevators on a regular basis tend to be elderly/infirm, so climbing anything would not be an option.

Even less so when the elevator is on its side rather than up/down when the ship listed over into it's final position, even at 10 or 20 degrees of list, those elevators have little support for anyone to manage climbing out of them, let alone making it to a deck level. One false move or a slip of a hand or foot and you will literally plummet from that single track....remember those glass lifts are NOT enclosed inside a tube shaft, they hang on a single trackway...you misstep or lose footing and you are off, there are not even any grab rails to try and reach, its all shiny brass and glass...there is sod all tween you and the bottom of whatever side was a wall but is now the floor and that can be close on 100ft depending on where the elevator stopped during the emergency. Even the most mobile or pax would be hard pressed to manage that.

It is easy to say that these things are reasonably simple to get out of when they are in the upright position and stuck.....have someone go get the equipment, bit of jiggery-pokery, a ladder and voila, you're out.

But since these are now laying on their sides and they do not have the bonus of the enclosed elevators of being in a square tube like shaft that could be walked or crawled along...these glass elevators have one side on the ship with three sides effectively in the air...no amount of fit pax or crew could have reached anyone stuck inside on Concordia or gotten them out.

Having one of those glass bubbles stop dead when the ship is upright can be scary enough....now place yourself inside that glass bubble with a 20-30 or 40 degree list and your goose is not just cooked, it is cremated.

As with the furore over the perks changes on board Carnival Cruise Line ships, the perks offered by Costa are not obligatory on their part...they can add or take away as they please.

Personally I have never cruised for the perks...they are a bonus, yes, but certainly not something that I cherish or demand to keep in order to stay with a company.

With all the squabbling over the perks, I wish the cruise lines would just get rid of all of them completely...it would certainly make for a quieter cruise.

This is Costa Concordia's atrium and glass elevators.....the angle of the photo is fairly close to that of her final resting place and it shows just how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to reach the glass elevators or escape from the glass elevators in the event of a severe list.

On the lower decks, there are deck "landings" which are quite well set back from the elevator tracks as they rise up the atrium, the upper decks have no deck landings, just a very large decorated shaft containing all the elevators.

The elevators do have escape hatches on their roof, however, in a situation that they found themselves that night, those elevator escape hatches are rendered useless since there is nowhere to escape to once outside of the capsule.

No-one can get to the doors from the deck landings when the ship is heeled right over, so no engineers would be able to rescue anyone from those elevators.

They are designed to be easily evacuated when the ship is upright, but they cannot be evacuated when the ship is listing.

Why do you think they tell pax NOT to use elevators in an emergency?

Why DON'T they disable them in a drill, thus giving pax a more reliable and lifelike experience...afterall, in the drill, most pax use the elevators without a second thought cos they are able to do so.

The accident has highlighted inherrent dangers in the glass elevator use on ships...now whether it will be ignored, remains to be seen.

"So Max is right...being stuck in an elevator on a capsized ship, especially the glass elevators, would be a truly horrific way to die cos you would be just waiting for the moment. In the internal elevators it would be dark, relatively quiet and you would be standing or sitting on what used to be the wall of the elevator or shaft, you might be confused into which was up and down, spacially disoriented...and again waiting for rescue that never comes, and inevitably death"

 

If you climb out of the hatch at the top of the car then there should be no reason why you would not go up to the nearest floor because the landing doors can be released from inside the shaft.

 

Fair enough...if the ship is in its upright position...

But since Concordia is on her side, the glass elevators will be effectively dangling with a 40ft plus drop below to what was a wall on a deck landing that is now the floor (with the furniture, fixtures and fittings that were on the floor when the ship was upright all in a heap), nowhere to get out and crawl to cos there is nothing to crawl on.

Glass elevators were designed for buildings, they have never been tested on a listed ship...cos no-one ever considered that a ship the size of Concordia would fall over onto its side. The mindset has been build them big, build them with glitzy bits like glass elevators cos they would never sink or fall over....standard design complacency, never build redundancy into it cos it'll never be needed.

Concordia has shown that these ships are not perfect, they can and do fall over - the cause of why it fell over is not important per se, but the fact that it DID go over has unveiled all sorts of design and equipment issues that had largely been ignored under the "it'll never happen, so we do not need to worry about that" file.

People ask why engineering staff did not go to the elevators when she went over...simple really...the deck became the wall, the wall became the deck...

The image below....Carnival Magic's glass elevators....in the vertical, they are fine, but in the horizontal they are potentially lethal cos there IS nowhere to go...

At least three were seen to have been in the glass elevators as the ship started to list...another passenger's eyewitness statement to that effect was posted here a couple weeks ago.

The internal elevators are nowhere near as bad as those glass ones.

At least the internal ones would effectively be in a tunnel when the ship is on its side, thus people could potentially use the roof escape hatch and crawl along the shaft in its now almost horizontal state.

Those in glass elevators have no such escape route when a ship is listing. The elevator is attached by one side only, it effectively hangs on that side attachment when the ship is vertical and horizontal...there is nothing that pax could crawl up or along, even if they did manage to get out of the top hatch...nowhere to go since the drop from the elevator to what was the wall on the ship normally and that would be the floor on a capsized ship could be 40 or so feet below them...that drop would likely kill you on its own, let along if there was any debris in the way.

Equally in the glass elevator, you see and hear everything going on around you...including the water level rising...you would, effectively, be trapped in a reverse fish bowl.

So Max is right...being stuck in an elevator on a capsized ship, especially the glass elevators, would be a truly horrific way to die cos you would be just waiting for the moment. In the internal elevators it would be dark, relatively quiet and you would be standing or sitting on what used to be the wall of the elevator or shaft, you might be confused into which was up and down, spacially disoriented...and again waiting for rescue that never comes, and inevitably death.

Ship elevators DO NOT have emergency power source, the power goes, they stop...usually tween decks and the doors do not release without maintenance crew assistance. Having seen it happen too many times on a variety of vessels over the years from ferries to cruise ships, its always the same...power goes off = elevators stop = maintenance crew required to "rescue" occupants and more often than not, the elevator concerned is out of service for at least 24 hours afterwards for safety checks, computer control reboot etc.

You are so wrong on international maritime law. Iran has no right to control international sea lanes that pass thru their otherwise territorial waters. They have threatened to violate international law for decades by controlling and or closing the straights of Hormuz which is an INTERNATIONAL SEA LANE.

erm...not sure which geography book you are using but IR655 was shot down in Iranian airspace by Vincennes in Iranian territorial waters.

Heck...the USN even managed to admit that Vincennes was in Iranian territorial waters when the shootdown was investigated...and in the Cineflex documentary about this incident, retired crewmembers of Vincennes confirmed that they did indeed stray into Iranian waters due to the adrenaline rush of being in combat.

Basically, Vincennes wanted a piece of the action that Montgomery was having, the crew had been on ops for a while and had seen no action....the adrenaline took over (just as it did on the bridge of Concordia whilst doing the fly-by, there was excitment at the prospect that took over the clear thinking minds).

Vincennes was in the wrong place, Concordia was in the wrong place...both caused by adrenaline junkies who wanted a piece of the action.

Oh and the map below clearly shows where the sea lanes are in the Strait of Hormuz (which is actually somewhere I have personally been more than once), and IR655 was hit to the north of those lanes, WITHIN Iranian airspace and territorial waters.