Posted on 02/03/2006 1:22:36 PM PST by libstripper
SAFAGA, Egypt - An Egyptian passenger ferry carrying nearly 1,400 people sank in the Red Sea early Friday during bad weather, and rescue ships and helicopters pulled dozens of survivors and bodies from the water. At least 263 escaped on lifeboats, the transport minister said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The other question worth asking is how many passengers was the ferry rated for? A common thread in these sort of tragedies often seems to be a gross disregard for safe loading limits.
Nope, the only question worth asking is how many more such ferries can we help to the bottom?
What immediately occurred to me was the high center of gravity, and the narrow beam. IMO it was just a matter of time.
Wasn't the original story that there were over three thousand people on board? Is this the same accident?
I'm praying for these people.
Just because they are Muslims, we are not and should not be in a position to gloat over the deaths of innocent Muslims of the ferry disaster because of what has happened in the past few days. We should instead offer our prayers and hopes that many will be found alive and safe from harm. Righteousness gloating over innocent deaths is a disgusting form of display. We're much better than that.
http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.com/2006/02/time-to-extend-prayers-and.html
No, there isn't. If you properly secure the doors (particularly the bow doors), that is.
Really!
First the Tsunami wipes out Indonesian Aceh,
then the earthquakes in Pakistan and Iran,
the deadly stampedes and fires in Mecca,
now this!
No, they have sinks, just no soap!!
Regardless of how it happened, it's a terrible tragedy. God rest their souls.
"You'd think that Egyptians would have learned to be wary of crossing the Red Sea in large numbers!"
BEST LINE AWARD
How typically bigoted and shortsighted and Arab.
I was stationed on the USS Saratoga during the first Gulf War. Around Christmas in 1991, we were in Haifa, Israel for liberty. On the first night of liberty, a ferry boat carrying a little over 100 of my shipmates, including my chief, got swamped in heavy seas and sank just a few hundred yards off the fantail. Twenty-two men died, including the chief who was sitting next to my chief on the ferry. He didn't remember a thing - he said that one minute they were in water up to their waists, and the next thing he knew he had somehow made it back to the surface.
The Israeli search and rescue teams were absolutely first rate - they had a helo up looking for survivors before we could launch one. They were a big reason why a lot more men didn't die that night. If the Egyptians turned down Israeli assistance, it's their loss. Of course, since they'll probably blame the Joooos for the sinking anyway, the higher the body count the better from their perspective.
Here's something I've been wondering all day, and maybe some of you old Navy salts with some savvy on the matter could chime in: is there any chance - any chance at all - that this ship ran into one of those old World War II mines we sometimes read about, or maybe something similar of more recent vintage left over from some Middle Eastern conflict at one time or another?
I have the feeling that the possibility's remote, and that, in the end, it'll turn out to have been something to do with the weather - which was reported to be bad - and the fact that this craft looks extremely "top heavy" to my (admittedly untutored) eye. But... I mean, after all, comparable ships sail all the time, and this one had been in service for decades without a mishap. So why now?
From the apparent suddenness of the sinking, indicated by the absence of a Mayday and the scarcity of survivors, it seems like something catastrophic and unexpected occurred. So... absent deliberate sabotage, that's why I'm wondering about some form of out-dated ordnance.
Any comments? Anyone?
Maybe a bilge or ballast pump failed, and they were unable to either trim the ship properly for the heavy seas or they were unable to get rid of excess water they shipped, again due to heavy seas. In the ferry boat sinking I described in Post 32, it was speculated that a pump failure may have been the cause. I had duty that night, and I remember standing on ther flight deck earlier in the day watching that little boat swoop up and down like a bathtub toy on the waves and thinking that I was glad I wasn't on board that thing.
They stack so many people on the upper decks that they become top heavy. Especially not good in bad weather.
agreed.
So you think this out-dated ordnance idea is too far-fetched...?
I mean, if they were having trouble trimming the ship, wouldn't they have known they were in trouble with enough advance warming to send out a Mayday?
I'm a completely landlubber, whose only experience on the water is in the bath tub, so please don't become impatient if I sound "off the wall", it's just that I'm wondering why it seems no one knew they were going down with enough lead time to send out a distress signal.
For a second I thought it read "Kerry sinks...".
I thought it was a good news story. Sorry.
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