Ferry disasters - al-Salam Boccaccio 98 nine years on

On this day............9 years ago, the al-Salam Boccaccio 98, a roll-on, roll-off ferry, set sail from Duba in Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea to Safaga in southern Egypt, carrying 96 crew and 1,312 passengers. It would never get there.

A couple of hours into the voyage, a fire broke out among the 220 vehicles on the car deck. Repeated attempts to put it out failed, and at about one o' clock on the morning of 3 February, 2006, the ship began to list alarmingly.

Within a few minutes she sank, without any of her bigger lifeboats getting launched, and people had to get away as best they could in rubber dinghies. More than 1,000 perished. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.

IHS Maritime and Trade Intelligence says that over the last ten years, 4,784 lives have been lost in accidents involving large ferries.  The worst year was 2011, when IHS says 1,642 people died. On September 10 of that year, the Spice Islander 1 sank off Zanzibar, with a death toll estimated at up to 1,500.

 

Disaster convictions - Bhopal etc

The eight Indians convicted for their part in the Bhopal disaster have all been sentenced to two years in prison, though one will not serve his time as he died during the 25 years the victims waited for justice. Campaigners such as Amnesty International and the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal have condemned the sentences as completely inadequate.

This feeling is not unusual. A fire in a supermarket in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion in 2004 killed 432 people, wiping out many whole families. It was alleged that fire exits had been locked, and the two owners and a security guard were put on trial.

In 2006, they were all sentenced to five years in prison, but families of the victims were enraged, and rioted. Two years later, the Supreme Court declared the sentences for the owners too lenient and increased them to ten and twelve years, but hundreds still protested.

After the Egyptian ferry, the al-Salam Boccaccio 98 , sank following a fire on board with the loss of more than 1,000 lives in 2006, an official inquiry concluded that she did not have enough lifeboats and that fire-fighting equipment had been inadequate. The owner and two other people were convicted, but all of them had left the country before the trial. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Almost a reckoning

Just over three years since she sank at the cost of more than 1,000 lives, the Egyptian owner of the al-Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry has been sentenced to seven years in jail for involuntary manslaughter. Mamduh Ismail, a former member of the Egyptian parliament’s upper house, which is appointed by President Mubarak, had been acquitted in an earlier trial.

Hundreds of victims’ relatives applauded the verdict, though there is no certainty that Mr Ismail will serve his sentence as he left Egypt soon after the disaster, and is now believed to be in Europe, possibly London. Two other defendants, also absent, were sentenced to three years in gaol.

The roll-on-roll-off ferry, which was carrying mainly Egyptian migrant workers and pilgrims home from Saudi Arabia, went down in the Red Sea on the night of February 2, 2006. A fire broke out on the car deck, and the crew were never able to get it under control. Passengers who were alarmed about the thick smoke were told by crew members to go back to bed.

By the time the crew had decided everyone had to abandon ship, she was listing so badly that it was difficult to launch the lifeboats, and more than 1,000 people drowned, with just 388 surviving. At the initial trial in July 2008, Mr Ismail and four other defendants from the ferry company were acquitted, while the captain of another ferry was gaoled for six months for failing to help the al-Salam.