Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[Vixen]

The JAIC investigators knew full well how and why the Estonia sank. They knew the cause with total certainty. Their certainty was based upon a proper understanding of all of the available evidence, together with their collective expertise, experience and intellect.

They didn't do what you're doing - which is to jump to a conclusion and then look for "evidence" to support your conclusion. Instead, they collected all the relevant evidence and testimony first, and then used that evidence/testimony to arrive at a conclusion.

All the things you've listed in your second paragraph above are nothing more than a mixture of falsehoods, misunderstandings and ignorance.

You just made that up off the top of your head. I bet you cannot even name four of the JAIC members. Yet here you are claiming to have done a probity check.

 

[Vixen]

No. Rather, I suspect he has a dislike (not "hatred") of people who arrogantly pretend they're experts on a subject, but who in fact are not only inexpert: they're actually utterly, embarrassingly ignorant.

FTFY (as they say).

I never claimed to be an expert. Stop lying.

 

[Vixen]

The F/P/FH/PH/WH/S and SW types are all built using a common body. You cannot tell which versions are in the photographs. The version is identified on the power button and on the UIN plate. You cannot read those in your photographs. Those equipped with a water sensor has a "W" added to the model number. Those equipped with a Hammar cradle have a "H" added to the model number. Adding an "A" indicates a device intended for aviation use

In the subsequent decades that have passed since, their model number convention has changed somewhat. But those conventions are still largely in use even though the KANNAD range has been split into separate aviation and marine companies (although still closely related).

You can try to pretend you didn't know this, or that it isn't true. But that is information you already have been provided and chose to ignore.

The JAIC report very plainly states they were Kannad-406 F type. That is, automatically activated and housed in casing with an HRU.

 

[Vixen]

Reality Check:

Suppose the Estonia managed to give her coordinates to the responding ships on that first MAYDAY exchange, and the crew activated the buoys. How much faster would the rescue group have arrived, and how many more passengers would have been saved?

By the time they make the MAYDAY call it was too late, passengers were largely trapped in their rooms, in hallways, and on staircases throughout the ship due to the list. The only passengers who had a chance were the ones who died from hypothermia. We're not talking about about a lot more people, not that they were not important, but as far as this tangent goes the buoy nonsense and the radio quality is a non-factor in the outcome.

Estonia needed to make that MAYDAY call right after the bow visor came off. Lifeboats and life-rafts could have been loaded and deployed earlier with far more passengers, and there is a good chance the ship stays afloat long enough to get most everyone off. They never inspected the car deck, and they never checked the visor from the forward deck (which would have revealed it was gone). And this is the crux of the disaster, the captain and crew failed in basic seamanship.

Suppose the damage to the ship was so intense the bridge had no time to make a Mayday and zero time to execute an evacuation of the passengers? The Bridge could hear all of the walkie-talkie messages and also see the same screen monitors as the engineers in the engine control rooms in the hull. The persons in the ECR saw the ramp was shut and claimed to have seen water coming in at the sides. Problem is, the sides constantly leaked in rainy weather so who knows whether that was due to the usual rainy weather or the bow visor off. Nobody saw the bow visor fall off. A couple of Estonian athletes claimed to have climbed down the car ramp, so it must have been shut. Linde had been in the car deck before doing his watch rouind to the upper deck. Unfortunately, he has changed his timeline so many times he cannot be held to be a credible witness.

 

[Vixen]

That ships had GPS-based navigation prior to 1998 doesn't establish that GPS-enabled EPIRBs were available prior to 1998. You lack basic reading comprehension and reasoning skills.

It was COSPAS-SASART enabled using AIUI six weather station satellites for pinpointing location. COSPAS-SOSART was invented 1979. Stop claiming satellite identification of location was impossible before 1998.

 

[Vixen]

That ships had GPS-based navigation prior to 1998 doesn't establish that GPS-enabled EPIRBs were available prior to 1998. You lack basic reading comprehension and reasoning skills.

If a ship had GDMSS then it will have had no problems with automaitcally activated EPIRBs and in fact manually operated ones would have been pointless, except as a man-overboard spare. There is hardly any point having an HRU if the thing needs to be removed manually for it to work.

 

[Vixen]

Because they all use the same plastic body and therefore all release in the same way, regardless of what turns them on. Releasing is not the same as turning it on.

They do not all release the same way.

 

[Vixen]

Considering the evidence was their responsibility. They did not see sabotage.

Citation please where they say this.

 

[Vixen]

So their job is to find sabotage, no matter what the evidence shows? They didn't find any evidence of sabotage because there was no evidence of sabotage, no matter how desperately you want there to be.

The massive rupture in the starboard side? The reports by apx 39 out of 79 passenger plus the third and fourth engineer plus A.B. watch reporting a bang or more often a series of bangs and collision effect, enough to slam them into walls and off their feet? The unregistered lorry on board with number plates not matching any registered driver? The bow visor falling off because of waves and not anything else...at Swedish midnight, midday through the journey and as the watch on the Bridge was changing...?


Seriously?

 

[Vixen]

*sigh*

1) You stated, wrt the people aboard the Estonia: "They had zero hope of rescue"

2) I responded to that statement of yours by pointing out that in fact 137 people had been rescued and survived.

3) My statement of fact therefore totally negates and nullifies your statement that there was zero hope of rescue.


I feel like we're in some sort of parallel universe by this point in time..........

The vast majority of those 137 survived thanks to their own efforts and the good luck (?) to have been on the top deck at the time, either in the bar or asleep on the cafeteria benches near the promenade deck, the others being Deck 1 passengers just on the deck above the hull who heard the bangs loud and clear, saw water seeping in and got the hell out.

 

[Vixen]

Just to note, the EPIRB cage recovered by the divers was not inside the bridge.

It states in the report:

Nobody said it was inside the Bridge. The divers were at the Bridge and I clearly said they were instructed as they entered the Bridge itself - some twenty minutes later in the video - to retrieve the logbook and GPS navigator.

Why would anyone need to be told that an HRU-activated buoy beacon would not be stored inside a room?

 

[Vixen]

Why on Earth do you (apparently) think that the EPIRBs should have been still attached to the ship after it had sunk?

Do you actually know what EPIRBs are, what their intended purpose is, and what needs to happen in order for them to be used for their intended purpose? Because your continuing attempts to imply that the EPIRBs' absence from the wreck of the Estonia is somehow indicative of malpractice/subterfuge..... strongly suggests otherwise.

If they were HRU-automatically activated Epirbs and the model Kannad-406F indicates they were, together with the divers retrieving the HRU that would have triggered activation, both to free float them and to emit a beam tot he satellite system, then the question needs to be asked, how come they did not activate but were instead found two days later covered in sand near Dirhami about 200km away? They were found to not be 'switched on', yet if the crew had not manually removed them and switched them on, then they should have done so automatically anyway on being submerged. Marine expert Asser Koivisto in a YLE article said they had not been tuned. Who knows if something was lost in translation but the Finnish for 'switched on' is not he same word as 'turned' or 'to set' or to 'activate' but definitely has electronic connotations.

The Commission gave high priority to the emergency buoys and Asser Koivisto valued their role. "This is the rescue system I trust the most," he told journalists Anders Jörle and Anders Hellberg, who published the book Disaster Course: Estonia's Road to Destruction (1997).
There, Koivisto says that the emergency buoys were sandy and really looked like they had floated ashore.
"But both transmitters were turned off," he says.
He also mentions rumors that the EPIRB buoys would never have been on board, but planted on the beach just to give the impression of being Estonias.
"I do not believe in those speculations," Koivisto says in the book.
In the final report, the Accident Investigation Board claims that the radio buoys were picked up near Dirhami on the Estonian north coast as early as 2 October. But if so, why did the Estonians not tell the rest of the Accident Investigation Board about the matter until December, when the dives off Estonia had already ended?
The divers of the diving company Rockwater are evidently looking for the EPIRB buoys on Estonia's command bridge in December 1994. This can be heard in the video that the Accident Investigation Board (Otkes) keeps in Helsinki. The Accident Investigation Board's colorful Finnish chairman and spokesperson Kari Lehtola, who died in 2019, worked here.

 

[zooterkin]

Had the Epirb on the starboard side come into contact with one to four metres of water when it listed - and Rockwater confirms it was hydrostatically activated - then, OK, so it still takes time for rescue to arrive but those people who had to wait until up to 07:00 - including the sole Brit - before being rescued, then the death rate amongst those who escaped the ship alone could have almost doubled to 262, by hel p being activated up to one hour earlier. That is someone's life, including children.

Er, what?

 

[Vixen]

JAIC didn't write it off as "just one of those things". There was no evidence of sabotage and thus no reason to investigate every daft theory that comes along.

Let's get stupid and say it was sabotage, had the crew done its job more people would have got to the lifeboats.



No **** Sherlock.

But they only had themselves to blame. The crewman phoned the bridge after the loud bang which was followed by excessive water surging past the ramp on the car deck. There was no damage-control party sent forward to inspect the situation, the captain had engineering check TV monitors - which in 1994 is criminally stupid. My job is monitoring 12 security cameras, and we're on our second evolution of this technology since 2005. The new cameras are a vast improvement on the ones they replaced, and I can't imagine the resolution on Estonia's cameras.

And even with our cameras I still have to physically inspect the property as they only reveal so much.

The decision to use cameras to monitor the situation on the car deck signed Estonia's death warrant.

The MAYDAY call came almost forty minutes too late. The closest Swedish naval base was well over an hour away.

You really need to familiarize yourself with the basic facts of this disaster.

The Estonia was sailing TOO FAST directly into the waves in that storm.



Source: https://www.estoniaferrydisaster.net/estonia final report/Contents.htm

[I even used a CT site for you.]

Sorry, but Estonia sank as a direct result of the actions of the command crew and the engineering crew...or lack thereof in this case...

It is not a CT site. It is merely an individual or individuals trying to make a scholarly attempt at understanding the disaster. The JAIC narrative is a descriptive one as far as it goes. However, what comes into your mind reading that? The vessel was out of control. Captain Andresson was Russian naval school trained. He was a stickler for discipline, not laissez-faire. What happened to Captain Andresson?

 

[Vixen]

Just to note, the EPIRB cage recovered by the divers was not inside the bridge.

It states in the report:

The Rockwater report from whence JAIC get this information states in further detail:

Rockwater Survey Report

Also under the direction of the authorities, divers accessed the Bridge of the vessel and retrieved a number of navigational aids, a man-overboard beacon and the hydrostatic release mechanism for one of the vessel’s EPIRB beacons. The bodies of 3 of the victims of the disaster were found on the Bridge.

From the Rockwater video: You can see the instruments Rockwater divers retrieved at circa 1:32:00 onwards. The diver places what looks like the hydrostatic release mechanism into the netting to bring up.

At 1:43:00 the divers then move into the bridge to attempt to retrieve a logbook and 'GPS Navigation', at 1:51:00 (surprise, surprise, so it did exist in 1994).

 

[zooterkin]

The JAIC report very plainly states they were Kannad-406 F type. That is, automatically activated and housed in casing with an HRU.

You have not produced a reference to show that this is the case. (Unlikely you can, since it isn't true.)

The 'F' stands for "Float-free".

 

[Vixen]

Er, what?

Erratum: survival rate, not death rate.

 

[Mojo]

Citation please where they say this.

Can anyone provide me with a citation for the report saying that they found no evidence that the Estonia was deliberately sunk by Vixen?

 

[Vixen]

You have not produced a reference to show that this is the case. (Unlikely you can, since it isn't true.)

The 'F' stands for "Float-free".

From google:

"What is float free EPIRB?
Float-free Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (FF EPIRBs) are water-activated distress beacons fitted in a float-free bracket. They are designed to activate when a vessel capsizes to a depth of 1–4 metres. They use a hydrostatic release function and a water activated switch."

 

[junkshop]

It was COSPAS-SASART enabled using AIUI six weather station satellites for pinpointing location. COSPAS-SOSART was invented 1979. Stop claiming satellite identification of location was impossible before 1998.

No-one has claimed that, Vixen , and you know that.

You claimed, back in post #1171, that

...they were in use in 1994. It is a satellite system only, so the EPIRB beacons had inbuilt GPS.

Various posters have repeatedly told you that GPS enabled EPIRBs were not available until 1998, not that "satellite identification of location was impossible before 1998".

Whether you are being deliberately dishonest, or merely struggling to comprehend, I don't know, and don't care to speculate.