SCHRIFTENREIHE SCHIFFBAU Festschrift anlässlich des 100 ...

� The ship got very rapidly a list over 20°, after which the lifeboats could not be lowered.
� The ship list reached angles 25-35° in a short time, after which it was very difficult to get
out of the ship.
� Persons, who waited for an alarm or instructions by public announcements of what to do,
left in general too late.
� Of those, who abandoned the ship into life rafts and into water, about 50 percent
survived.
� It was not possible to lower the life boats due to the large list. Most passengers did not
manage to release and make the life rafts to open. The crew assistance was not always
available.
� Almost all persons on board went to the higher port side of the vessel. This rendered 50
percent of the life saving appliances meaningless. In case of the MV Estonia this was
probably not a problem, as only about 237-310 persons of the total 989 persons onboard
got onto Deck 7 and abandoned the ship. According to the JAIC Final Report the ship
had 2298 life vests for adults and 200 for children onboard, which should have been
enough for the persons onboard even in a one-sided evacuation.
� At least 21 persons are known to have abandoned the ship starting from the Deck 1
below the vehicle deck, which is furthest away from Boat Deck 7. The real number is
likely to be somewhat higher. A crude estimate of the number of persons on Deck 1
gives 190, which yields a minimum abandoning rate estimate of 11 percent for the
passengers on Deck 1. According to the survivors’ testimonies they were pre-warned by
the noises, already concerned of their safety and left in a hurry, many of them half-naked,
just after the sudden large heeling motion of the ship. Without this pre-warning the
abandoning rate from this area would have been even lower than the current 11 percent.
The minimum ship average abandoning rate is 24 percent.
� The average ages of the persons on different decks were extrapolated from the survivors’
ages having cabins on these decks and adjusted to yield correct average ages for the
ship passenger and crew populations. Even if these extrapolated results are not totally
reliable, they give an indication that there can be significant differences in the age
distribution of passengers on different decks. It would be possible to take such features
into account in the ship interior design.
� The passenger age differences between the different decks can be at least one partially
explaining factor to the very low survival rate of the passengers in cabins on Deck 5,
where the average age was estimated to be 64 years: Only 4 persons are known to have
abandoned their cabins on Deck 5, youngest of them being 49 years old: Based on this
we get a minimum abandoning rate estimate of only about 4 percent.
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