Tenth anniversary of sinking of Estonia - disaster tightens security measures for ships

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Tuesday, September 28th is the 10th anniversary of the sinking of the passenger and car ferry Estonia off the southwest tip of Finland. The ship went down when its bow door visor fell off in a storm while en route from Tallinn to Stockholm.
      The disaster, in which 852 people were killed, has led to changes in security measures for passenger ships, including new training for the crews, better rescue equipment, and structural improvements in the vessels themselves.
      Although the average age of passenger ships is fairly high, Kaj Jansson, technical manager of Viking Line, says that the ships are safer than ever. He says that they are kept in good condition, and improvements are being constantly implemented.
      On this tenth anniversary of the darkest day of passenger travel in the Baltic, Jansson sees no threats to passenger traffic, with the possible exception of terrorism, which he considers unlikely to affect these waters.
     
Petri Varsta, Professor of shipbuilding technology at the Helsinki University of Technology, says that the greatest hazard facing passenger ferries is the danger of touching bottom. If a vessel at high speed passes over a rock, the hull of a ship can "open like a tin of sardines", which is what happened to the Sally Albatross off Porkkala in 1994.
      Professor Varsta notes that running aground is the most frequent type of maritime accident along the Finnish coast.
      Another potential hazard involves the difficulties in evacuating a ship, with possibly thousands of passengers, in the darkness of night in stormy weather.
      Under present thinking, the ship itself - even if it is damaged - is the safest place for the passengers, and they should be kept on board as long as possible. Varsta also says that a ship should be designed so that if it does sink, it will do so in a controlled manner, remaining upright, and not tipping over as the Estonia did.
     
Professor Varsta neither endorses nor disputes Kaj Jansson’s view that passenger ships are safer than ever. He notes that while there have been no serious accidents in the past decade, there is no reliable way to measure the actual degree of safety.
      He says that in retrospect, a number of omens of what was to come were to be seen in the period before the sinking of the Estonia. The accident occurred because the ship’s bow could not withstand the waves of the autumn storm. However, similar bow door damage had happened before, but no information about such incidents had been collected for analysis.
      There have long been demands for a register of close-call situations. No such data bank has yet been established, even though it could give experts valuable information on the potential seeds of disaster before they take root.
     
Martti Heikkilä, a leading investigator at the Accident Investigation Board of Finland, says that painting pictures of threats is very dangerous. He notes that nobody has been killed in any accident on a Finnish passenger ship since the 1960s.
      Heikkilä wants to focus on the positive developments in navigation safety.
     
The focus in recent debate on maritime safety in the Baltic Sea has been on the environmental hazards of oil transport.
      Nevertheless, the basic problem facing car and passenger ferries remains the same as it was in the early hours of September 28th, 1994: that of a long, open, and undivided car deck. The Estonia disaster showed what can happen when such a vast open area is flooded with water.
      Although the safety systems of the ships have developed since then, the basic problem is the same.


Links:
  Estonia 1994-09-28
  MS "ESTONIA" disaster
  Final report on the MV ESTONIA disaster of 28 September 1994

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