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

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Vixen said:
Look, if a huge cruise car ferry liner suddenly sinks like a stone killing up to a thousand people within minutes, how glib is it for Sweden's then [outgoing] Prime Minister to announce to the Swedish people, of whom one in five of the Swedish population had a relative, friend or colleague brutally killed in the accident ...
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Wut?

That would mean each victim would need around 2 thousand Swedes who could reasonably be described as a 'relative, friend or colleague'.
 
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abaddon said:
Let's speculate. Suppose the beacons really did automatically activate. That would happen exactly when? After the ship sank, that's when. So after the ship sank the beacons would broadcast....what exactly? They couldn't broadcast a location because they were not GPS equipped. Cospas satellites would have to receive the signal and it would be triangulated. This would only start AFTER the ship sank.

But look at the c16 traffic. 24 different stations received the Mayday from Estonia. Now unless we go with Vixen's mad subterranean mariners sending radio messages while underground, that has to have happened before Estonia sank and before any EPIRBs were released or activated, automatic or not. Estonia already identified it's name and location. That has to be before sinking. The ship had not sunk yet.

In summary, Vixen cannot identify how EPIRBs would have in any way made the slightest difference. Nor how they would have accelerated any rescue effort. Nor how they would report a position not having GPS. Nor how airports were closed to all traffic. Nor how short wave and VHF and UHF were all blocked at the same time.

Go look up JFK Steve. He is retired now, but he had little tolerance with idiots blocking channels with open carrier due to borked PTT switches.

Vixen seemingly cant work that out either.

Bottom line? I know Vixen is wrong. That is the end of it. Somehow, I am certain Vixen will argue the point. Because reasons.
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Whether they expedited the rescue effort or not is not the issue. The JAIC was supposed to investigate the accident. Their entire scope was the bow visor and nothing else. It writes off the communications problems as a wee glitch by MRCC Turku and Helsinki Radio, together with the EPIRB's not reacting as they should, as, 'it matters not, as it would not have speeded up rescue'.

Imagine if they were tasked with investigating, say, a car crash. For some inexplicable reason the airbags didn't automatically work as they should. The JAIC would say, 'Ah well, they would have died anyway, so who cares about the non-activating airbags?'


Shocking.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Two whole days!
I think that is pretty good going.



Because he realised he made a mistake and changed his opinion?

Those sonar images are not photographs. they have to be interpreted.




So what is your theory?

That the bow visor was moved by the divers?
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Occam's razor tells you Bildt and Lehtola were sure of the bow visor having come off - although no-one, not even Sillaste reported this at the time - because they were already informed of this by the Swedish intelligence services. If you recall, the problems with radio and telephone networks notwithstanding, unlike MRCC Stockholm, Bildt seems to have recieved the news of the calamity immediately (witnesses saw him pulled away from his leaving party in a hotel shortly after one (0200 EET), and he is coy about when he first heard the news.

How did the security forces know? Probably because they were there at the scene. How else would they have known? Sillaste's testimony is so vague - saw water coming in via a monitor screen in the engine room (one witness out of 137) - it is hardly definitive hard evidence as of that date.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Who, apart from you has every claimed this?
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Er, the Joint Accident Investigation Committee (JAIC) in its preliminary report, just SEVEN DAYS after the disaster.

Preliminary report by the Commission of Inquiry completed Estonia sinking began with the detachment of the visor

Backman Nils-Eric 5.10.1994 2:00

The cause of the sinking of TURKU-Estonia has been confirmed by a devastating sequence of events. First the ship's visor was cut off, then the water leaked through the bow ramp to the car deck in the storm. When the car deck filled with water, the ship lost its severity and capsized. Many of the events that led to the accident, on the other hand, are unclear. It is not known what time it all happened and what information was available on the bridge prior to the accident. It remains unclear what action the ship's officers and crew had taken at different stages of the accident.

On Tuesday, the International Commission of Inquiry into the Estonia disaster published its preliminary report in Turku. The Commission is of the opinion that the vessel lost its stability and was overturned by the water accumulated on the car deck. The water got to the car deck at the bow ramp.
Video descriptions of the Estonia wreck show that at some point the ship had lost its visor. The images show that the visor locking brackets on the hull of the vessel have been broken.

Kari Lehtola, a member of the International Commission of Inquiry and chairman of the Finnish Major Accident Investigation Planning Board, says that it is not yet known whether the fracture of the visor attachment mechanism was caused by metal fatigue or local overload. So far, the side locks of the visor have not been studied. The Commission therefore decided that more frontal parts of the wreck will be filmed with robotic cameras in the coming weeks. The Commission will then next meet in Tallinn. In addition, before dispersing, the Commission decided that the Estonian and Finnish delegations would launch the search for estonia vis-10.

"It is absolutely essential to find and lift the visor to determine the reason for its detachment," Lehtola says. So far, it is not known how much the visor came off before estonia sank. According to the Commission of Inquiry, it appears that since estonia lost its visor, the waves have gradually caused the bow ramp fasteners to give way and the ramp has opened somewhat outwards. It has not yet been possible to determine whether the ramp's fastenings were broken or opened. It is also not yet known whether the detachment of the visor already caused a leak in estonia.

According to the Commission's report, it has so far not been possible to point out any faults in the ramp fastening system that would explain why the ramp opened in the sea. Nor has it been yet been able to investigate the betrayal of the ship's distress signal lines.
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HS

Impressive!!!

So that is settled then.
 
Vixen said:
No, if they had been 'switched on' - whether manually or automatically - then switching it off doesn't recall the signal the epirb would have sent.
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If it was working properly. You don't know if it was working properly until you examine and test it.
 
Vixen said:
Er, the Joint Accident Investigation Committee (JAIC) in its preliminary report, just SEVEN DAYS after the disaster.

HS

Impressive!!!

So that is settled then.
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Just out of interest, what would upset you the most:

1. The preliminary reports all talk about terrorism. The final report conclude that it was a technical fault.
2. The preliminary report all talk about technical fault. The final report conclude that it was a technical fault.
 
Vixen said:
Look, if a huge cruise car ferry liner suddenly sinks like a stone killing up to a thousand people within minutes, how glib is it for Sweden's then [outgoing] Prime Minister to announce to the Swedish people, of whom one in five of the Swedish population had a relative, friend or colleague brutally killed in the accident - including 70 Stockholm policemen and policewomen - that the cause of the surprisingly rapid sinking was 'just an accident caused by the bow visor falling off because of a wave' before an accident committee had even been appointed. He announced this, a joint three-country committee was appointed shortly after, including his own appointment for the Swedish side.

How does Bildt know better than marine experts such as Johansson and Laar who openly said they suspected possible sabotage and many survivors reporting a series of what sounded like explosions? Why was he so quick to deny there had been any crime or atrocity?
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How glib is it to say what he said? Not glib in the slightest. He said (obviously based on what survivors were saying) it looked like the bow visor had failed and that was the likely cause of the sinking. He didn't claim any expertise. He didn't claim any other explanation was ruled out. You're just spinning a load of crap with fake 'quotes' to try to trash him and it's frankly as mystifying as it is nonsensical.
 
Vixen said:
For the umpteenth time, the fact the automatic buoys failed to automatically activate (which they still would have done had they been automatically switched on by a quick thinking member of crew, so that rules a manual switch on out)...
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I can't parse this. What rules a manual switch on out?
 
Vixen said:
For the umpteenth time, the fact the automatic buoys failed to automatically activate (which they still would have done had they been automatically switched on by a quick thinking member of crew, so that rules a manual switch on out).
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Your English here is so utterly mangled that none of that makes much sense.

Care to rephrase it?
 
Vixen said:
For the umpteenth time, the fact the automatic buoys failed to automatically activate (which they still would have done had they been automatically switched on by a quick thinking member of crew, so that rules a manual switch on out).

From a quality broadsheet at of the time (I actually used to pop down to Covent Garden every day in order to get this newspaper from a vendor which sold quality international newspapers, including Herald Tribune and El Mondo, et al., albeit a day behind):

HS


And 13.12.1994

HS

And


HS
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Why do you favour a newspaper story from before the buoys were recovered and tested?

If they had been automatic but hadn't activated it would be an important fact.
It would have led to the regulating authorities and the manufacturer being involved.
All the buoys of the same model would have to be recalled and tested.

We know that they weren't faulty as they were recovered and found to be in working condition.
 
Vixen said:
The Estonian EPIRB satellite buoys were in working order, although the message they automatically sent did not progress to the alarm system for some reason. Estonian and Finnish experts experimented with buoys detached from sunken Estonia on Tuesday with icebreaker Tarmo. According to Estonian radio, the buoys sent four hours of radio communications, which should come via satellite to the ground station. The next step is to study the operation of the ground stations to find out where the automatically triggered alert message disappeared.
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Experts are now investigating why the buoys were not working at the time of the accident. After entering the water, the radio transmitters in the buoys should have automatically indicated the exact position of the vessel via satellites. The satellite buoys were found as early as Saturday and transported to the Estonian Maritime Administration. The telegram from the Estonian news agency ETA did not mention where the buoys were found.
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The reason the signal which the buoys "automatically sent" did not progress to the alarm system is that they were never switched on so they didn't automatically send anything at all. It's not completely clear whether this journalist believed the buoys activation was automatic or if they meant the continuous operation of the beacon after being switched on was automatic. If it was the former they were mistaken.

Studying the ground stations to see where the "automatically triggered" alert message disappeared was a red herring as the message was never sent in the first place. Please also note that "automatic" in this instance refers to the process of turning a received beacon signal into an alert, and not to the activation of the beacon.

In the other quote "automatic" refers to the system which identifies the position of the buoy and not to the activation of the beacon.
 
junkshop said:
You can't switch off the hydostatic activation mechanism (on the ones that have it, which these didn't).

ETA: to clarify, they weren't so much 'switched off', as 'not switched on'.
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Vixen said:
Whoops. Perhaps read up a bit more?
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junkshop said:
Where is my error?
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Vixen said:
Once 'switched on' a signal is emitted to the relevant receiving satellite.


The tests indicate that the buoys did not automatically activate as they should have.
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Your first point is irrelevant to my post.

Your second is irrelevant and incorrect. The bouys had no capacity for automatic activation.

I ask again, where is my error?
 
Vixen said:
Whether they expedited the rescue effort or not is not the issue. The JAIC was supposed to investigate the accident. Their entire scope was the bow visor and nothing else. It writes off the communications problems as a wee glitch by MRCC Turku and Helsinki Radio, together with the EPIRB's not reacting as they should, as, 'it matters not, as it would not have speeded up rescue'.

Imagine if they were tasked with investigating, say, a car crash. For some inexplicable reason the airbags didn't automatically work as they should. The JAIC would say, 'Ah well, they would have died anyway, so who cares about the non-activating airbags?'


Shocking.
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Manufactured outrage. Invented quote. No. That's not what they said.

The JAIC did not say any failure of the EPIRBs didn't matter. The JAIC did not find any failure in the EPIRBs at all. They found the crew did not switch them on. This did not materially affect the rescue.
 
Here_to_learn said:
Just out of interest, what would upset you the most:

1. The preliminary reports all talk about terrorism. The final report conclude that it was a technical fault.
2. The preliminary report all talk about technical fault. The final report conclude that it was a technical fault.
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The preliminary report is the final report. The scope of the investigation was the bow area. Full stop. Period.

So anyone who still has questions is a dirty little conspiracy theorist who should be hung upside down by the ankles and smeared with tar and feathered.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
How glib is it to say what he said? Not glib in the slightest. He said (obviously based on what survivors were saying) it looked like the bow visor had failed and that was the likely cause of the sinking. He didn't claim any expertise. He didn't claim any other explanation was ruled out. You're just spinning a load of crap with fake 'quotes' to try to trash him and it's frankly as mystifying as it is nonsensical.
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The only survivor who had been interviewed as of 28.9.1994, the day Bildt made his announcement was Henrik Sillaste, who, to his credit, has never changed his story. He has always said he heard a series of hard bangs, never saw the car ramp open, never saw the how visor fall off.

The JAIC summarise witnesses accounts so it is hard to determine whether the words 'He saw the bow visor was missing' were his words or their words. I am highly sceptical that having just escaped the ship via the funnel in the pitch black of night he would have noticed anything much, or surely he would have mentioned the bow visor missing in his first seven interrogations. He was handcuffed. Interviewed by three prime ministers as well as Säpo and Supo, it must have been extremely intimidating for him, but he never said what the JAIC tried to put into his mouth in their report.

He has consistently drawn a shut car ramp with water at the sides, not the top for press and police.
 
Vixen said:
The preliminary report is the final report. The scope of the investigation was the bow area. Full stop. Period.

So anyone who still has questions is a dirty little conspiracy theorist who should be hung upside down by the ankles and smeared with tar and feathered.
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I don't understand how your answer related to my question.

This was my question, on two possible scenarios:

1. The preliminary reports all talk about terrorism. The final report conclude that it was a technical fault.
2. The preliminary reports all talk about technical fault. The final report conclude that it was a technical fault.

Out of the two scenarios, which one one upset you the most?
 
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