
M/S Estonia accident radio transcript - _delirium
http://oona.windytan.com/estonia/
======
EliRivers
William Langwiesche wrote a really good article on the view of passengers from
inside the sinking vessel. It's well worth a read.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-
st...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-
story/302940/?single_page=true)

It would be nice if someone could please _not_ stick a fatuous "TLDR" here.

~~~
fphhotchips
Just to reiterate, this is an excellent article, even if it is chilling.

It's funny, you wouldn't think, even 20 years ago, that this sort of stuff
could still happen. But humans are still human, and the sea is still the sea.

------
codezero
Reading these disaster transcripts always haunts me. But it's also nice to see
strangers rally to help each other. There is no discussion of cost, delay, or
hardship.

It seems very weird to me that ultimately, according to Wikipedia, they buried
he ship with pebbles. Why was this done, I thought most sunken ships were left
alone.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
The wreck is covered with pebbles at great cost to prevent anyone diving on
the wreck to investigate what happened. Then no one can prove anything and
everything remains just speculation. Ban any diving, threaten anyone diving
the wreck with arrest and then just completely ignore the relatives' calls for
an independent investigation.

Then in this information vacuum ordinary people do the rest by alleging anyone
who questions the official line is a "conspiracy theorist".

I mean science can answer so many questions, but only when you have trace
evidence to examine.

~~~
m_eiman
There have been investigations and video inspection of the wreck. "Everyone"
agrees that the official explanation is correct.

The reason for covering the wreck is that the disaster was a major national
catastrophe; if 800+ hadn't died it would never have been considered.

Says Wikipedia:

 _" In the aftermath of the disaster, many relatives of the deceased demanded
that their loved ones be raised from international waters and given a land
burial. Demands were also made that the entire ship be raised so that the
cause of the disaster could be discovered by detailed inspection.[27][28]

Citing the practical difficulties and the moral implications of raising
decaying bodies from the sea floor (the majority of the bodies were never
recovered), and fearing financial burden of lifting the entire hull to the
surface and the salvage operation, the Swedish government suggested burying
the whole ship in situ with a shell of concrete.[29][30] As a preliminary
step, thousands of tons of pebbles were dropped on the site.[28] The Estonia
Agreement 1995, a treaty among Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland,
Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom, declared sanctity over the site,
prohibiting their citizens from even approaching the wreck.[31]"_

~~~
codezero
I still don't understand why it was burried just because it was a tragedy. Was
there some practical concern that bodies might slowly creep out of the wreck
onto the surface or that people would loot it?

~~~
kzrdude
It's lying at 50-70 metres deep. If it is not recovered, the "grave" is open
so to speech for curious divers, and that was very much not desired. Either
recover it or bury it.

The Titanic was different; it lies below 4000 metres of water.

~~~
codezero
I see so it's mainly because the depth made it so accessible. Thanks. That
makes sense.

------
MDCore
Here is the relevant Wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia)

~~~
0x0
It's 20 years to the day since this event. I'm guessing that's the reason this
was posted now?

~~~
tazjin
Yes. Newspapers here in Sweden ran different kinds of "Remember Estonia"
articles during the last days.

Aftonbladet had a pretty interesting (and very long) article about it:
[http://story.aftonbladet.se/?id=602](http://story.aftonbladet.se/?id=602) (in
Swedish)

~~~
bybjorn
Norwegian Aftenposten also published a pretty good interactive story of the
event: [http://mm.aftenposten.no/estonia/](http://mm.aftenposten.no/estonia/)

------
Gravityloss
Having spent a little time on the sea, it's remarkable how much weather
impedes any operations, and naturally accidents often happen at night in bad
weather.

These huge ferries just had to wait there and about a hundred people died
right outside in the sea.

Just running a regular rubber boat in normally windy weather on the Baltic is
next to useless as the propeller spends a large portion of time out of the
water and you can't get anywhere. Coast guards and specialized rescuers have
better high speed RIB boats. And in the Baltic it's probably nothing compared
to North Sea weather.

If one could develop a large enough quad- or hexacopters that could be stored
on all ferries and deployed to pick up people and lower them to ferry decks,
that would help a lot. Hypothermia kills people so quickly there's often not
enough time to send specialized help craft from far away.

~~~
exDM69
> If one could develop a large enough quad- or hexacopters that could be
> stored on all ferries and deployed to pick up people and lower them to ferry
> decks, that would help a lot.

Unfortunately, quadcopters can not be scaled up because the physics of
multirotors doesn't scale nicely. The inertia of the blades goes up to the
fifth power of the blade length. Double the blade length, 32x inertia. This
would give prohibitive power and mass requirements.

A lot of quadcopter research focuses on using multiple copters for lifting co-
operatively because building big ones is not feasible.

Multirotors are not particularly good in high wind conditions either. Even the
specialized search and rescue helicopters (e.g. Super Pumas and SeaKings) had
difficulty operating (and some were unable to operate) in the hostile weather
conditions during the Estonia disaster.

Short of carrying on board search and rescue helicopters (and trained crews)
and and other hoisting equipment, there is very little that can be done to
rescue humans from the sea in storm conditions.

~~~
Gravityloss
Thanks for the good summary! I knew there was a limit to scaling, didn't
realize it was the fifth power...

On the other hand, if you're just lifting the copter itself and one person, it
doesn't have to be the size of a full blown helicopter. Then again, its
utility is limited then.

------
tjaerv
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/2...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/28/newsid_2542000/2542093.stm)

------
villetou
Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki Times) made an impressive article about the
incident with background ambiance and videos. Do other newspapers do these
kind of interactive stuff?

[http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/estonia/](http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/estonia/)

There was also a similar article made about the Plura cave diving accident
with all that stuff and a friggin minimap of the divers!

[http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/syvalla/](http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/syvalla/)

~~~
Pyrodogg
The New York Times has also been publishing a number of these interactive
types of articles.

Ex. Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek
[http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-
fall/#/?part=tunne...](http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-
fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek)

------
toomuchtodo
Wikipedia says the wreck site is monitored by the Finnish navy with radar. If
you were to approach the wreck via submersible, I would assume you would not
be detectable.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
The gulf of Finland has one of the most extensive underwater listening systems
in the world. You cannot start up a screw anywhere between the Marienhamn and
St Petersburg without the Finnish Navy knowing about it.

------
reitanqild
01:41.39 Helsinki Radio You see, someone on channel 16 has had a carrier on
the whole night and nothing is going through. I can hear you now though.

------
Matti
The mayday call from Estonia and the ensuing radio traffic is available on
Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7cZTEQJ2VQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7cZTEQJ2VQ)

------
rurounijones
Documentary:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFDGL_ehpkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFDGL_ehpkI)

Warning: It is pretty bloody harrowing.

------
pyre
Am I missing something? The transcript ends with listing of helicopters and
times. Is there supposed to be more?

------
bashshell8833
RADIO fit with an ALLEGED 'conspiracy theory'?
[http://heiwaco.tripod.com/app1.htm](http://heiwaco.tripod.com/app1.htm)
Anders Bjorkman. book Lies and Truth about the ... Accident

what fun. with no degree in Naval or Maritime Engineering does the human
obervations fit with the official explanation of the PROCESS and using open
source basic stability calculations / physics?

What is disturbing is that the human process is flawed similar to the Costa
Concordia - Italy Cruise Ship. The captain can just decide to change course to
a dangerous path and there are FEW CHECKS on the captain or LEADER OF THE
TITANIC.

Full Speed Ahead! Damn the icebergs. Welcome to Bash shellshock and the
process 'fork bomb'

