Anyone watched the Discovery Channel Special Inside the Concordia? I just turned it on half way threw where they are talking about the life rafts and how they do not have lights inside them strangely. This Show may become invaluable for prepping with all the first hand accounts and videos and may change how we decide to prep.

I did watch the show from beginning to end. It was very enlightening.

Personally I am not very much of a Cruise Ship person, but that is just me.

The show left me with a LOT of food for thought, and oddly a lot of assurances about the safety that is built into the ships. For me the fact that there were plenty of lifeboats on the ship was a great fact in my mind. Regrettably, because the ship was listing so far to one side the boats on the high side of the boat could not deploy, but in the open ocean the boat would just release the boats as it sank into the ocean and leaving the boats to float, kind of like a floating dry dock that releases a boat by lowering into the water.


The show left me with the affirmation that a flashlight even the smallest of ones would have been invaluable. The lights went out twice, once when the boat hit the rocks, and again when it ran aground. Having food or snacks or anything like that was not really needed as they were not far out to sea.

The type of issues that the boat had were pretty simple, there was not fire, no smoke, no rapid catastrophe. While everything happened in a short time there was no sudden sinking or snapping of the ship. The necessary equipment list for this disaster I see as a flashlight, important documents, CC Cards, and maybe (and an extreme maybe) a spare air tank. Heck if the captain and crew had been honest and had a moment of forethought, this could have been a textbook scenario.

It is my understanding that there are RAPID changes happening in the maritime regulations requiring lifeboat drills to happen before the ship even leaves the port and not 24 hours as before.

It would be nice to see the cruise ships grow more understanding to people who wish to carry more preparedness equipment on the ships, but I don't really see that happening.

I didn't follow the event as it happened and had not heard much about it. I flipped the channel over and watched a few minutes of it after you posted. They were 100 yards from shore according to what I saw. Jump off boat, swim to shore. Any further and I'd go with jump off boat, use clothes as flotation device as taught to me in boot camp (Navy), float to shore.

Like I said, I only watched a few minutes of it. What were the extenuating circumstances that made it much harder than that? Mind you the water would have been cold, but it's only 100 yards or so.

100 yards in 59 degree water would be a painful swim, but it sure beats going down with the ship.

What I found most interesting about the show is how it explained how the wind saved the day.

Earlier reports through the Captain's attorney made it sound like he did something extraordinary to turn the ship and run it ashore.

So it would appear that the Captain is a liar and a coward.

At 3:50, a woman says, "Turn the camera off."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCQppWMJrp4

In all life events, I will take demands like that as my cue to continue filming. I missed the filming of my daughter exiting her mother's womb because some silly nurse blurted out, "No, don't film that." I was so exhausted and nervous that I didn't film, and the moment passed, darn it.

OK, so experts were able to track the course of the Concordia by using the AIS (Automated Identification System), which provides plotting information in real time. Does anybody know if the data from the AIS is available to the public? If so, what software/hardware do I need?

ireckon:

I would think the real time tracking would be off limits to the general public. Probably for the same reasons that Real time tracking of planes locations are not available to the public. While departure and arrival times are real time and tracked, the exact whereabouts of the plane is not reported.

Tyber

The hardest part, I think, would be the mental aspect. From the video clips I saw, the leap looked like about 30 feet down into darkness and cold water, during chaos and people screaming. Even when the ship deck sunk closer to the water, there still was the mental challenge of knowing you'd be completely on your own. Further, I imagine almost everybody there had a companion, quite possibly a child. My companions would need me, and they would not have taken that leap.

Anyway, would you need clothes for flotation when you have the life vest? That's not a rhetorical question. I actually don't know. In the videos, everybody had on a life vest.

One gets the impression that most of the fatalities occurred to people who were trapped or stayed below deck for one reason or another. Percentage wise, most of the passengers did evacuate successfully. It doesn't seem that leaving the ship, once you had reached an open deck, was the issue.

Life vests in the US are supposed to have 20 pounds or more of buoyancy and are able to turn a adult, floating face down, over and support them.

I would be very cautious about leaping fifty feet (or even a shorter distance) into unknown water, especially in the dark. It would be just my luck to hit a rock, which at that distance would likely result in a serious injury or worse.

I came back and watched the show after I had DVR'ed it. It does indeed look like pretty much everyone had life vests on. That would rule out the need for using clothing for flotation.

30 feet may be a decent fall into unknown water, but I'd really like to think I would find a way to get into the water and get my folks to safety. Staying with the sinking ship is generally not going to give you a very high probability of survival.