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About the question of whether or not the ferry swerved left or right or slowed down before crashing into Lamma IV, there do appear to be conflicting accounts.
I have said in a post here and also to the media that according to my recollection, the ferry neither swerved left or right nor slowed down before the crash. I am quite certain the ferry did not turn before impact. The reason for this is that everyone on the lower deck was thrown violently forward by the force of the impact. (In my own case, my child and I were in the aisle at the time and were thrown into the air and landed about two meters forward of where we had been standing). If the ferry had swerved left or right, we would have been thrown to the side (right if swerving left, left if swerving right). So of that I am quite certain. Looking back, my wife says it’s possible that seconds before impact, the ferry’s engine was cut. My recollection is that impact occurred without any warning sign at all. Even if the ferry cut its engine or attempted to slow down before impact, it had to have been seconds before, and I doubt that doing so did much if anything to reduce the impact. Again, it was quite sudden and violent, and it would be more accurate to say the ferry slammed into the boat than that it drifted into it. I suspect this is one reason the Lamma IV appears to have sunk so quickly—due to the force of the impact and the damage it caused. As I’ve said before, one of my first thoughts (to the extent that I was thinking clearly at all in those first moments) was that the ferry must have hit something submerged beneath the water; otherwise, how could it have hit it so suddenly, without warning, and at what appeared to be full force? To me, one major question is still whether or not the ferry crew saw the Lamma IV at all in advance. If so, I can’t imagine that it could have been more than a matter of seconds in advance of the impact.
I saw the HKKF Sea Smooth being removed from the Yung Shue Wan ferry pier yesterday. I was on the 4:30 ferry from Central and saw it being transported by two tug-boats, one in front, one in back. Does anyone know where it has been taken?
And by the way, being on that 4:30 ferry was in itself a troubling experience, as the ferry was one of those small ones about which Lamma people on this thread and elsewhere have expressed concern. First of all, the 4:30 ferry is usually crowded with many school children. When I passed through the turnstiles in Central at 4:20, ten minutes before departure, the sign above them flashed only 50 empty seats left. That ferry is really too small for the 4:30 departure. Secondly, looking around on the upper deck, I saw that there are emergency exits indicated, but they appear to be difficult to open and how to do so was not self-apparent. This means the only clear exit is the main one used to get on and off the ferry at the back. You’d think after this accident that HKKF would be doing all that it could to reassure passengers of its safety precautions, and instead it is substituting these small ferries that worry people for the big ferries. I imagine HKKF will claim that it has no other recourse since it’s lost one of its major ferries, but I would still like HKKF to show that it is willing to listen to concerns of regular passengers and perhaps respond to them in some fashion. This is certainly an area where concerted effort on the part of regular passengers could bring some pressure to bear on HKKF to respond to concerns.
I have been struck by the paucity of public mourning on Lamma, even while I know from this thread and from speaking with many individuals that there is great sympathy and sadness on the island. On Tuesday, I noticed two bouquets of flowers lain on the pier. Yesterday, Thursday, my wife attended the three minutes of silence organized by the Rural Committee. She said there were only a couple dozen people there and noted that gweilo outnumbered locals (she herself is HK Chinese). While the three minutes of silence persisted, passersby pushed through the two dozen gathered as if nothing was going on. I notice a church is organizing a prayer service on Saturday. But surely there could be a more concerted response. Why is there not? Is it because Lamma is so fractured into different groups. To generalize grossly, it appears that villagers are impervious to anything that is not immediately related to clan or commercial interests while the majority of gweilo seem to flow above social concerns as if they lived somewhere else entirely. Sorry for that gross generalization-- I know it does not apply to a great many people--, but does it not have some truth? If not, what accounts for the lack of a public show of togetherness in our mourning? I have no great network of friends or acquaintances on the island, so I do not feel well placed to organize effectively, but wouldn’t it be a good gesture to organize a trip to HK Electric power station to pay our respects, or a ceremony on the ferry pier? This weekend, the first full one after the accident, would be timely. Past that is a little late.
There has been some discussion on the thread of the role of the police. I have noted before that in the rescue operation, all of the emergency services appear to have performed admirably, even heroically. But in collecting information and investigating, the police and the government have been very slow off the mark, showing the worst of HK bureaucratic tendencies.
It’s at such moments that I am grateful for a (relatively) free media. My wife and I have been willing to speak to the media generally because we think it will help to get to the bottom of what exactly occurred and more particularly because of the government’s slow response and HKKF statements that contradicted our own experience of what happened on the ferry. We have noted t.v. news’ tendency to fish for sound bites, and while print media was more careful in its interviewing, we have been dismayed by inaccuracies in its representations of our statements. I don’t expect the media to get everything right. From my point of view, it largely serves the purpose of amplification—to get the word out. But if you want the word to be right, you have to find a way of presenting the matter in your own words (thanks lamma.com.hk for the opportunity!). Still, the media spotlight is one of the best ways to pressure the government to carry out a proper investigation.
As noted previously in this thread, when my wife approached the police on the night of the accident, she was rebuffed. Now the police in notices at the ferry pier is asking the public to call a hotline with any information. The government has promised a full investigation, though it is unclear when this will begin. Now that seven crew members from the two boats involved in the crash have been arrested, there must certainly be a criminal investigation, and I assume the police are looking for information in regard to the criminal investigation (even though on the night of the accident, a policeman told my wife that this was not a criminal matter and if she had a complaint, she should call the ferry company or the marine police). So now it appears there will be two investigations, a criminal one and a government inquiry, and it is unclear how these two will relate to each other and the extent to which they overlap. At any rate, government investigation of the accident is already showing signs of incoherence (not to mention slowness!). I am skeptical of its capacity to conduct a proper investigation in terms of both number of investigators, quality, methodology (the bureaucratic versus the proactive approach—think of the leads it could glean just by trawling this thread, something which the media have done), and the potential influence of vested interests (read: big business). I must say my reaction to the arrests of the crew members was skepticism and suspicion: The police had done very little investigation at that point and had refused to take statements from witnesses such as my wife. It looked like both police and government were trying to appear to be moving swiftly and decisively, and I feared there would be an attempt to pin the blame on a few “small potatoes” rather than look at more approximate responsibility. For example, I just heard that a standard shift for a ferry captain is 20 hours—is that right? And I heard that concerned parties in the past have asked the government to more tightly regulate work hours (of course, there is no law on maximum work hours in Hong Kong, the only developed society without one) of ferry captains, but the government has not done so—is that right? In other words, I suspect there are various levels of responsibility. That is not to say that there may not have been criminal negligence on the part of the parties most involved—indeed, there is good reason to suspect this--, just that a proper investigation of all the causes would be more far-reaching. Let’s hope my skepticism is misplaced, but I do think attention by media and citizens will pressure the government and police to investigate properly and thoroughly.
Sorry for the long-windedness! Hope it’s useful….
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