South Korea ferry disaster: transcript shows crew crippled by indecision
Messages between officers on vessel and traffic officials reveal miscommunication and hesitation at crucial phase
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South Korean coastguard officers transfer a covered body onto another vessel as they recover bodies where the Sewol ferry sank. Photograph: Issei Kato/REUTERS
Officers manning the stricken South Korean ferry that sank last week were hamstrung by indecision and communication problems at the critical moment when deciding whether to evacuate passengers, according to the full communications transcript.
As divers continued to pull bodies from the submerged vessel on Monday, the calls between the crew of the Sewol and traffic officials on the nearby island of Jindo reveal hesitation and uncertainty during a crucial phase in the disaster.
The transcript is certain to add to the anger felt by the relatives of the approximately 240 missing passengers, most of them teenagers who were on a school trip.
"If this ferry evacuates passengers, will they be rescued right away?" an unnamed crew member asked officials at Jindo vessel traffic services centre at 9:24 am on Wednesday, about 30 minutes after the ship began listing, apparently after making a sharp turn in a stretch of water peppered with tiny islands and known for its strong currents.
The initial delay in getting all 476 passengers, including 350 high school pupils and their teachers, off the ship made the task far harder. Officers on the bridge of the Sewol, which lies submerged in water off the south-west coast of South Korea, had already indicated that once the vessel was tilting heavily to one side, passengers increasingly found themselves unable to move.
In another message, the bridge told officials on Jindo that it was "impossible" to broadcast instructions to passengers.
"Even if it's impossible to broadcast, please go out and let the passengers wear life jackets and put on more clothing," an unidentified traffic official said in response.
The bridge then asked about the prospects of an immediate rescue effort.
The unnamed official on Jindo replied: "The rescue of human lives on the Sewol ferry ... the captain should make [his] own decision and evacuate them.
"We are not fully aware of the situation, so the captain should make the final decision on whether you're going to evacuate passengers or not."
The crew member replied: "No, I'm not talking about that. I'm asking, if they evacuate now, can they be rescued right away?"
At this point there appears to have been a confused response from the traffic official, who said rescue boats would arrive in 10 minutes, but failed to mention that a nearby civilian ship had already offered to help 10 minutes earlier.
More evidence that human error may have been a key factor in the disaster – the worst in South Korea for 20 years – came as divers continued to pull bodies from the wreck on Monday after finding a way into the ship on Sunday. The number of confirmed dead now stands at 64.
After days of frustration because of strong currents, divers have now found several ways into the submerged ferry. That includes a new entryway into the dining hall made early Monday morning, Koh Myung-seok, a government spokesman, said.
On Wednesday, 174 passengers, including 20 of the 30 crew members, were rescued in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
The parents of missing children directed their anger towards the government and the police on Sunday after they were prevented from travelling to the presidential Blue House in Seoul to make a personal appeal to the South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye, for more action.
Hundreds of relatives who have been camped out in a gymnasium on Jindo have denounced what they describe as the slow, and at times chaotic, official response to the disaster. Many cannot comprehend how those responsible for safety were unable to save their children given that it took almost two hours for the ferry to sink.
On Sunday, police blocked about 100 relatives from walking more than 400 kilometres north to Seoul, where they planned to take their grievances directly to Park.
Scuffles broke out after police prevented them from crossing a bridge connecting Jindo to the mainland. The parents, who yelled accusations that the government had killed their children, staged a sit-in but turned back after being promised a meeting with the prime minister, Chung Hong-won.
"We want an answer from the person in charge about why orders are not going through and nothing is being done," Lee Woon-geun, the father of missing passenger Lee Jung-in, 17, said. "They are clearly lying and passing responsibility on to others."
Chung Hye-sook, whose child is among the missing pupils from Danwon high school in the Seoul suburb of Ansan, was furious that she had been asked to provide a DNA sample to help identify bodies before the search of the ferry had been completed.
"What are those people thinking?" she asked, referring to officials who had asked for the sample. "We are asking them to save our children's lives. We can't even think about DNA testing. I want to save my child first."
The families have also directed their anger towards the crew. On Saturday it was revealed that third mate Park Han-kyul, who was steering the vessel when disaster struck, was navigating the stretch of water for the first time, while the captain, Lee Joon-seok, was absent from the bridge.
Lee, Park and helmsman Cho Joon-ki, 55, were arrested on Saturday as investigators examined why they had delayed issuing an evacuation order for 30 minutes after the ferry began to list. Some survivors said they never heard orders to leave the ship over the public address system.
Lee, 69, faces five charges, including negligence and violations of maritime law, amid accusations that he abandoned the stricken vessel while hundreds of passengers were still on board.
Park, 25, was at the controls when the ship took a sharp right turn just before sending its first distress signal, according to tracking data. Yang Jung-jin, a senior prosecutor, said Park had just six months' experience, adding that investigators did not yet know if the ship had been sailing too fast when she apparently executed the turn.
After divers reported no visible damage to the vessel's hull, speculation is mounting that the turn could have dislodged heavy cargo, causing it to list and sink.
Five days after the accident, and with the chances of finding anyone alive looking increasingly slim, it now appears that the hundreds of divers initially brought in to rescue passengers are now involved in a grim recovery operation.
Three vessels with cranes capable of hoisting the Sewol have arrived at the scene but will not be used without the parents' permissions and until rescue workers are certain that there are no survivors, the South Korean coast guard said.
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My comments :
1. Maybe the inexperienced third officer - that apparently had not been supervised by a senior officer - had not been properly informed by her superiors, about the structural adaptation of the ship a few years ago.
2. Thereby (allegedly) the topside of the ship had been extended vertically (with paying-passengers capacity) whereby the point of no return from a relatively regular listing angle, might have been substantially (principally) changed from the permitted angle of listing from the original ship-design.
3. There also seems to have been a (incidental) time factor involved into the tragedy (and well) in the sense, that the ship had been delayed from its departure (and subsequent arrival) schedule originally due to heavy fog, which might have led up to the engagement into a higher speed than might have been recommendable / advisable / responsible given the total sum of circumstances.
4. The speed factor, in combination with the aggressive local currents, the relative sharp and sudden maneuvering, the altered point of equilibrium of the ship-structure itself, the unwanted shift of the freight within the under-deck area, and the lack of experience of the third officer, might easily have resulted into the fatally capsizing of the ferry.
5. While the hesitation to evacuate the passengers in time might have been mainly derived from the fact, that the captain consciously had been taken command (from a possible culpably, commercially related, pre-meditating ferry company) on a vessel, that had been extremely poorly equipped with rescue means in the first place.
6. In the conversation transcript between "the bridge" with the office on the shore the chain of command of the disaster-ship seems to have hesitated to evacuate the passengers immediately after the first distress-signal, because the crew seem to fear the death of the passengers by drowning outside the ship (being) FULLY AWARE OF THE FACT, THAT THERE HAVE NOT BEEN ENOUGH LIFE-JACKETS AND NO LIFE-BOATS ON BOARD AND THAT THE AVAILABLE INFLATABLE LIFE-RAFTS ON THE UPPER-DECK SEEMED NOT / HARDLY TO BE OPERATIONAL.
7. One also has to take into account, that once the ship had been capsizing beyond the point of resurrection, all kinds of logical material forces had been entering into the original shape of the ship-structure, whereby heavy forces of (metal deforming) torque for instance might have been responsible for hampering / blocking the doors from opening.
8. Of course, this latest observation alone, might have been of enough significance, that it should have overridden all other considerations of the crew, while irresponsibly time-consumingly contemplating the (right procedure of the) evacuation of their passengers.
9. Elsewhere in the Guardian I already mentioned the striking similarity between the Sewol disaster and the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster and I also referred extensively to the possible wider culturally and politically determined factors behind / leading up to the tragedy.
10. I also mentioned the crucially altered information-factor - spearheaded by the ICT inspired information society, whereby the public at large increasingly is directly (often in real time) comprehensively informed by way of the social media - by-passing and exposing the usual PR exercises from possibly criminally involved governments and ditto companies...
RobertBleeker
21 April 2014 1:23am
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1. The BBC - by way of one of their correspondents at location - is mentioning, that there is a growing political element involved into the official disaster-management as well, developing from the fact, that the parents are getting ever more frustrated, by the (apparent) lack of organization and responsibility by the crew, the ferry company and the South-Korean officials and politicians
2. The BBC correspondent for instance, has been referring to an (alleged) incident whereby the SK MP had to be carried in, to stop a delegation of outraged parents to engage into a voyage to Seoul, in order to gather public support for their position of assertiveness against the government.
3. The SK government has been alleged to be extremely nervous on the possibility-scenario, that the desperately and angrily protesting parents of the victims aboard the disaster-ferry might evoke a more general politically motivated movement against the SK government.
4. One should - in my opinion - also bear in mind- while trying to make sense of the entire situation leading up to the disaster, during the disaster and in the aftermath of the disaster thus-far - that the (exclusively USA orientated) SK society as such has been engaged into a heavily fought PR war with the NK government and NK officials from the fifties on-wards, whereby the SK society has been presented worldwide as the successful show-case for a certain economical system.
5. In that context of (supposed) western superiority, the SK government is not exactly in the habit of accepting a world wide portrayal of (possible) corruption, political inadequacy and moral-ethical and organizational failure.
7. In that same context I did project my assumption on the possible direction and outcome of "an official investigation" into the disaster. : Too many examples of the inconvenient truth about badly managed governmental and non-governmental organizations might become public, which consequently might lead up to the possible loss of position and power and wealth.
- RobertBleekerI dont get your point. You identified alot of angles but whats your point. ?1. This calamity meanwhile seems to have gone from a relative straightforward (however tragic) maritime disaster, into a national political upheaval, because a significant part of the desperate and outrageous parents of the victims seems to have supersede the usually honored, politically correct boundaries, and are loudly demanding answers on elementary questions from the highest echelons within the political leadership of SK.2. The leadership of SK - being under increasing pressure from what until now has merely been a relative small group of vocally active parents and their representatives - seems to becoming seriously afraid, that the initial action of the parents, eventually might erupt into a nationwide protest against (alleged) wide-ranged corrupt practices in politics and economic sectors within South-Korean society as a whole.3. So, by the potential changing of the scale of possible public protest, a change of interests seems to be taken place, whereby political leaders seem to be more interested into a potential survival of their own privileged positions, than in establishing the final truth on the disaster with the Sewol and every factor, that - objectively - might have been contributing to that disaster.4. This assumption seems to have been perfectly illustrated by the recent official statement from the SK president (Park), who seems to be very keen to be seen by the nation as a strong, effective and responsible leader, but in reality is directing the responsibility of the maritime calamity, exclusively to the captain and his crew, in stead of waiting for the outcome of an overall independent investigation, that after all might conclude, that the terrible accident might be derived from a wide-spread culture of corruption and abuse of power within South-Korea as a nation.5. Apart from the opportunistic and propagandist shift of emphasis by the SK leadership, I pointed out as well, that - to understand the overall mentality in SK, one has to take into account, that - South-Korea for a consistently long time has been playing a major part in a gigantic western political propaganda machinery against China and its satellites (such as North-Korea and its leadership).6. In the process of that virulent propaganda-war, it might easily have occurred, that negative elements within the organization and functioning of the SK society might have been systematically erased from national awareness, and as a consequence, corruption from politicians and industry might have been unpunished for too long..
7. So, on the level of the disaster-ship, its crew and the ferry company one might easily discover many ruinous corruptive practices, that might have led to the disaster, but those practices might easily have been originated from and facilitated by a general culture of corrupt officials and ditto politicians, so one even might conclude in the end, that this was a disaster waiting to happen.8. The point of my contribution is, that the procedures leading up to the truth-finding in the case of the capsized ferry and the refusal to evacuate its vulnerable passengers and the possible wider ranging background of this disaster, might be heavily obscured by dark political forces and ditto culturally determined elements, that might be engaged by venting strong public appeals to "national interest".
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