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Merged South Korean ferry sinks - hundreds missing

Greedo said:
Why text messages, though? I mean, in that situation, wouldn't you naturally call your loved ones? Seems odd, I'm leaning towards this too.

ETA: and wouldn't you first try to notify emergency services, then loved ones?
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They may have tried and failed to make a voice call, SMS is somewhat more robust. And in that situation I'd assume the emergency services knew of the sinking.

Also.
Marine salvage expert John Noble has stated that he believes there is now "very little chance of finding any survivors alive". He says "if they did, it will be by pure miracle". Captain Noble described the search effort as like "going through a maze blindfolded".
 
Greedo said:
Why text messages, though? I mean, in that situation, wouldn't you naturally call your loved ones? Seems odd, I'm leaning towards this too.

ETA: and wouldn't you first try to notify emergency services, then loved ones?
Click to expand...

You would probably do what you do out of habit. Kids these days mostly text, not call. The family is in their contacts, they may never have called emergency services before.
 
rwguinn said:
How would text messages get the Faraday cage that is the metal hull?
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Probably via windows or sent from on deck. That's assuming the ship doesn't have a GSM relay of its own that was operational.

The "This might be the last chance to say I love you" message was sent by one of the survivors so I doubt he was deep inside the hull. Many of the other messages were sent while the students were waiting for instructions, after having been told to remain below decks.
 
Just a note on the timing of the text messages: a message may be recieved some time after it was actually sent. There have been occassions here where my wife is in a local store that has a metal roof. There are parts of the store with almost no cell phone signal. I have recieved texts from her that were sent in the store, but I didn't recieve until after she'd returned home.

Apparently, the texts may be "stored" on the phone, which will attempt to resend to the SMS server. Additionally, the server will hold the messagea nd periodically attempt to send to the target phone. We've had a siumilar issue with iPhones as well, and differences between texts sent as SMS vs. text send in their iMessage format (using your internet connection), with multiple versions of the same text recieved at different times (due to failures of one mode or the other) or in diffferent orders (due to lag affecting one service but not the other).

So I'd take reports of messages long after the accident with a grain of salt, until more details are available.
 
catsmate1 said:
They may have tried and failed to make a voice call, SMS is somewhat more robust. And in that situation I'd assume the emergency services knew of the sinking.
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That occured to me after posting. You can "send" an SMS even without connection, it'll wait until it can transmit and then send it.


ETA: Hellbound beat me to it.

Not notify them about the sinking, but that there are survivors in an air bubble.

catsmate1 said:
Also.
Marine salvage expert John Noble has stated that he believes there is now "very little chance of finding any survivors alive". He says "if they did, it will be by pure miracle". Captain Noble described the search effort as like "going through a maze blindfolded".
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:(
 
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Greedo said:
Why text messages, though? I mean, in that situation, wouldn't you naturally call your loved ones? Seems odd, I'm leaning towards this too.

ETA: and wouldn't you first try to notify emergency services, then loved ones?
Click to expand...
Kids text as often as call. And other text messages were sent, at least one by a kid who survived. I don't think that is a smoking gun. But one can imagine a distraught parent making the story up wanting to see more effort to find any survivors inside the sunken vessel.

What's atrocious as if this wasn't tragic enough was the incompetent emergency response by the captain and crew.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
What's atrocious as if this wasn't tragic enough was the incompetent emergency response by the captain and crew.
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This. It appears that most of the ship's life rafts weren't used and the orders to the kids to remain below decks may have killed hundreds of them; reminds me a bit of the Yarmouth Castle disaster.
 
I should hope that this spurs South Korea to review its laws on safety. It is after all a wealthy country and can afford decent safety standards.
 
rjh01 said:
I should hope that this spurs South Korea to review its laws on safety. It is after all a wealthy country and can afford decent safety standards.
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I seriously doubt it... There is a rather cavalier attitude toward safety of most every type.. It's probably more of a fatalistic attitude than anything else...

I'll bet a dollar to a donut that evacuation procedures (deployment of life rafts, etc.) had NEVER been practiced aboard this vessel...

I took a cruise on one of the boats that travel up and down the Han River in Seoul and there was no safety briefing at all... I finally had to ask where the life preservers were located. The answer I got was "Don't worry, this is a very safe boat, we've never had a problem".
 
Checkmite said:
Indeed; I'm seeing shades of Costa Concordia in some of the reports.
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I think the captain apparently leading an atrocious response to the emergency situation and abandoning his ship long before the majority of his passengers could are truly unspeakable acts. He likely has hundreds of deaths weighing on his conscience already, but I also hope the Korean justice system puts him away for a very long time.
 
AdMan said:
I think the captain apparently leading an atrocious response to the emergency situation and abandoning his ship long before the majority of his passengers could are truly unspeakable acts. He likely has hundreds of deaths weighing on his conscience already, but I also hope the Korean justice system puts him away for a very long time.
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I won't be surprised if he offs himself.

And he would have good reason to.
 
Reheat said:
I seriously doubt it... There is a rather cavalier attitude toward safety of most every type.. It's probably more of a fatalistic attitude than anything else...

I'll bet a dollar to a donut that evacuation procedures (deployment of life rafts, etc.) had NEVER been practiced aboard this vessel...
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www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/world/asia/south-korean-ferry-accident.html

communications_officer said:
He added that he could not recall taking part in any evacuation drills for the ship, and that when a real emergency came, “I didn’t have time to look at the manual for evacuation.”
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Reheat said:
I took a cruise on one of the boats that travel up and down the Han River in Seoul and there was no safety briefing at all... I finally had to ask where the life preservers were located. The answer I got was "Don't worry, this is a very safe boat, we've never had a problem".
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I took a cruise in Jeju and they did actually take a short moment to point out the location of the life vests.

As far as institutional changes, I think the Sampoong collapse did finally force changes, perhaps this have a similar effect.
 
Reheat said:
I seriously doubt it... There is a rather cavalier attitude toward safety of most every type.. It's probably more of a fatalistic attitude than anything else...

I'll bet a dollar to a donut that evacuation procedures (deployment of life rafts, etc.) had NEVER been practiced aboard this vessel...

I took a cruise on one of the boats that travel up and down the Han River in Seoul and there was no safety briefing at all... I finally had to ask where the life preservers were located. The answer I got was "Don't worry, this is a very safe boat, we've never had a problem".
Click to expand...

In contrast I went on a boat cruise lasting four hours and we were told where the life vests and other safety equipment was. This was on a river. They never had a problem either
 
I've just heard about this a couple of hours ago. I've also heard that the captain was the first to abandon ship. If true, I hope they throw the book at him, hard.
 
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