El Faro Container Ship sank October 1, 2015 in a hurricane.
El Faro, Top 10 Failures Of The NTSB Investigation – gLive E21
December 16, 2016 by gCaptain
Agelbert NOTE: For full background info on the following video, see the post after the video. The full transcript shows that massive waves were striking the El Faro over an hour before it sank. Beyond some talk about "seas near Alaska", the crew never estimates the size of those waves.
Cargo ship severely listing as El Faro did shortly before sinking in a hurricane.
A wave that hit the ship causing a list of over 38 degrees is mentioned as a historical occurrence but at no time does the crew, or the NTSB that heard the full transcript, (except with "uhhhh" and "are you okay?" and "do you want a chair? - to the helmsman") directly mention wave height as a clear and present danger.
Admittedly, it was dark until the last hour or so, so they had no way of visual measurement. But as experienced mariners, they should have intuited wave height from the pounding.
When the ship was hulled, obviously it was caused by a powerful wave. I do not understand why the NTSB doesn't not want to talk about wage height and damage unless they were told NOT to mention it because of
the link between climate change and increasingly dangerous destructive waves. In the following video, the fact that the fuel is stored inside a double hull is pointed at as a major fault in the ship design. The containers are stored two hulls away from the sea. BUT, the fuel is only ONE hull from the sea.
SO, if the outer hull is pierced, the fuel gets contaminated and you lose power. This is a potential death sentence in rough seas. This happened to the El Faro.
But anyone reading/listening to the transcript of the last few hours will note the massive hits they (low frequency sounds recorded and helmsman difficulties) got BEFORE they lost power.
In fact, the ship was hulled BEFORE it lost power. So the wave height should be considered as the primary cause of the eventual sinking instead of the admittedly faulty design of storing fuel in between hulls (a stupidity born of crude oil tanker design documented by an MIT graduated expert in a book he wrote - mentioned in the video).
NTSB Releases El Faro VDR Bridge Audio Transcript; Opens Investigation Docket
December 13, 2016 by gCaptain
http://gcaptain.com/ntsb-releases-el-faro-vdr-bridge-audio-transcript/Agelbert NOTE: EVERYTHING said on the bridge during the last several harrowing hours is posted. The crew did all they could, but the storm was too strong.
Climate Change will make the oceans more and more hostile to shipping as the years go by. Yes, giant waves making shipping
difficult to impossible have been predicted by Climate Scientists to increase, in frequency, size and duration, as a Climate Change consequence of Global Warming.
Here's my three part article that contains a lot of info on shipping that you may be interested in reading, as well as the references to recent, peer reviewed scientific studies predicting giant waves:
Climate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: Three Part ArticleClimate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: PART TWOClimate Change, Blue Water Cargo Shipping and Predicted Ocean Wave Activity: PART THREE