Mojo
Mostly harmless
But none of this alters the fact that the EPIRBs on the Estonia were manually activated.
Cont: The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VI
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MarkCorrigan
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Exactly, and this is something Vixen doesn't seem to get.
Even if she were 100% correct that the law at the time meant that all such vehicles were meant to carry automatic beacons that doesn't suddenly change the nature of the beacons the Estonia did have. They recovered the beacons. They were manual.
It's like the eyewitness testimony debacle again. Even if eyewitnesses claim to have heard explosions, that doesn't trump the fact that there is no physical evidence of explosions. None at all.
Sure, laws and eyewitness accounts are great start points for an investigation, if the physical evidence contradicts the eyewitness or the law, then the eyewitness is wrong and the law was not being followed.
If there were a law that said that police officers must carry a gun with a calibre no greater than a 9mm, and a police officer was found with a .45 magnum, that doesn't magically make the .45 a 9mm. It means the police officer was in breach of the law.
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
And yet it took me around five seconds to find it......
And yet I have no trouble with the idea that Vixen will actually never be able to find it. Vixen lives in a rather singular world.
Andy_Ross
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Something is being misread.
Amendments are added to Solas regulations but don't change the dating of the underlying regulation.
Auto activation was not mandatory for Estonia at the time it sank, the IMO council ammended the regulations in light of the Estonia sinking.
I have the IMO documents somewhere, I will look through them now
Jack by the hedge
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Yes, I see what you mean. Para 4 is saying all ships have to comply on these two points, and para 5 is saying other than para 4, older ships may comply with the previous version until 1999.
The JAIC report notes the Estonia's certification was for 1974 SOLAS. I can't immediately see and further detail about its EPIRB compliance.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Reg. 1 § 4 applies only to satellite EPIRBs, not to immersion-activated EPIRBs. All ships are required to have satellite-capable (i.e., transmit on 406.028 MHz instead of 406.0.25 MHz) EPIRBs regardless of construction date.
Reg. 1 § 5 provides a grandfather option for compliance for ships constructed prior to 1 Feb. 1995. At the operator's discretion, those ships may conform to the older SOLAS standard until 1999, when they must be brought into full compliance. This exempts MS Estonia from compliance with Reg. 7 § 1.6 (including the § 1.6.4 provision for float-free detachment and immersion activation).
Here §§ 1.6.2 and 1.6.3 are illustrative; they require the EPIRB to be mounted in an "easily accessible" position on the ship and to be capable of being carried by hand into a secondary vessel. This refers to older emergency beacons fitted to older ships that were not portable, not self-contained, and not capable of flotation. Keep in mind that not all use cases for an emergency beacon involve the ship foundering. This is also true of older aircraft models, which had similar grandfathering provisions prior to the ability to make them small, portable, and operable from a portable battery. Often these older beacons were kept in equipment racks along with navigational equipment and other equipment not easy to access or service. The goal here was to offer older ships more time to refit their radio equipment.
Reg. 1 § 5 provides a grandfather option for compliance for ships constructed prior to 1 Feb. 1995. At the operator's discretion, those ships may conform to the older SOLAS standard until 1999, when they must be brought into full compliance. This exempts MS Estonia from compliance with Reg. 7 § 1.6 (including the § 1.6.4 provision for float-free detachment and immersion activation).
Here §§ 1.6.2 and 1.6.3 are illustrative; they require the EPIRB to be mounted in an "easily accessible" position on the ship and to be capable of being carried by hand into a secondary vessel. This refers to older emergency beacons fitted to older ships that were not portable, not self-contained, and not capable of flotation. Keep in mind that not all use cases for an emergency beacon involve the ship foundering. This is also true of older aircraft models, which had similar grandfathering provisions prior to the ability to make them small, portable, and operable from a portable battery. Often these older beacons were kept in equipment racks along with navigational equipment and other equipment not easy to access or service. The goal here was to offer older ships more time to refit their radio equipment.
SpitfireIX
Philosopher
I searched every instance of "EPIRB" in the report. There's nothing about the beacons' being noncompliant.
Andy_Ross
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Ok Found the reference.
Estonia was exempt for two reasons
One for being of an age that allowed until 1999 to update the beacons
This was to do with the expected life of a beacon. It was thought unreasonable for a ship with new beacons that had an expected in service life of 6 to 7 years depending on make and model, to have to replace them straight away.
Second the Estonia was not in compliance with verification anyway.
It was running on a domestic Swedish certification that was not SOLAS compliant. This allowed it to operate in coastal waters within certain range of a port, recognising it was not safe to operate offshore in open sea.
After Estonia sank, the time period for compliance was scrapped for passenger vessels at least.
Estonia was exempt for two reasons
One for being of an age that allowed until 1999 to update the beacons
This was to do with the expected life of a beacon. It was thought unreasonable for a ship with new beacons that had an expected in service life of 6 to 7 years depending on make and model, to have to replace them straight away.
Second the Estonia was not in compliance with verification anyway.
It was running on a domestic Swedish certification that was not SOLAS compliant. This allowed it to operate in coastal waters within certain range of a port, recognising it was not safe to operate offshore in open sea.
After Estonia sank, the time period for compliance was scrapped for passenger vessels at least.
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Andy_Ross
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They weren't, the Estonia was an older ship, and allowed to carry the manual only beacons until 1999.
At the time it sank auto activation was just a recommendation, it was to do with the service life of beacons.
This has all been gone through in detail earlier in the thread, section 3 I think.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
This specifically allowed MS Estonia to operate under the Reg. 1 § 5.1.2 exemption to Reg. 7 § 1.6.4 until 1999. To elaborate on my previous post in this respect, assuming MS Joe Random Vessel whose keel was laid in 1979 had an EPIRB in an equipment rack below the weather deck that was able only to operate at 406.025 MHz, it would have been required to replace or upgrade that equipment with one capable also of operating at 406.028 MHz (satellite-capable) prior to 1 Aug. 1993 in order to remain in compliance. If its operators elected to certify under 1974 SOLAS, they would have until 1 Feb. 1999 to replace the old rack-mounted EPIRB with a float-free, satellite-capable, immersion-activated EPIRB that is "easily accessible" and ideally on the weather deck where it can float free. Achieving this may, for example, require them to do a lot of rewiring and construction since most EPIRBs of that type allowed remote activation from the bridge or other parts of the ship. This is why grandfathered vessels were given extra time to comply.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As has been belabored many times and newly explained, the EPIRBs carried aboard MS Estonia were in no way out of compliance with the regulations under which she operated at the time of her sinking. They were in working order when recovered and tested satisfactorily. This is the reason no non-compliance is alleged in the JAIC findings.
This has ever only been a secondary argument by inference from Vixen. She argues that the EPIRBs "must" have been immersion-activated despite all evidence to the contrary because that's what regulation required.
It's illustrative to realize that everything is in order if you remove Vixen's misinformed allegations from the equation. Her tizzy can be explained entirely by Vixen not knowing how EPIRBs work and Vixen not knowing how to properly read maritime safety regulations.
SpitfireIX
Philosopher
Thanks for correcting my misapprehension, Jay. But at least I now see why Vixen's repeated linking [ETA: to] these safety recommendations from the early 1990s is completely irrelevant. Even if they were actual amendments to SOLAS, they still wouldn't have applied to the Estonia.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Or chooses to ignore.
Exactly. Hers is typical of fringe argumentation. As we see in the vaccine example, people will point to 10,000 studies that show vaccines are safe, but when one appears to show they aren't, someone claims "See! I knew it all along!" Similarly: here's a pile of documentary evidence that the EPIRBs were fine, just not turned on. But then a few distant sources suggest otherwise and that's what she says should prevail. Conspiracy people latch onto inferential arguments as a way to try to bluster past the much stronger, much more reliable evidence. Real investigators weigh the evidence according to its reliability, not according what they want to hear or whether someone's feelings might be hurt. What you can infer should have been the case is utterly irrelevant when confronted with physical evidence of what was the case.
MarkCorrigan
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Even if that were not the case, it wouldn't matter as the beacons were recovered and were not automatic so even if it was mandated by law applicable to the Estonia, the Estonia didn't have them regardless.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Correct. If my industry has a chronic nostra culpa, it is that we don't push harder for earlier regulatory compliance on issues we know to relate to safety and reliability. Yes, as professional engineers, part of our job is to balance economic and other constraints against safety and reliability. But it seems that the operators of things we build tend to be more vocal advocates for economy and ease, leaving us the uncomfortable task of prodding people to be more conscientious. It's a weird entente discordante.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
But keep in mind that this is all as reported in the JAIC report, and Vixen's argument starts from the premise that the report is merely a wash, a cover story. She wants to argue that the beacons were immersion-activated because they "had" to be, that the JAIC is either lying about the manufacturer's model or that we're lying about the features of that model. They "must" have been sabotaged while crews were "tuning" them, and that's why they didn't operate as required. Substitute EPIRBs, possibly not the real ones, washed up "suspiciously" where they could be found and written into the cover story.
You have to pile up all of Vixen's assumptions and speculations in order for the story to have any sort of pseudo-logical connection. But the starting point is, "If the JAIC reported it, then it must be false."
SpitfireIX
Philosopher
Thank you also.- Status