Friday, January 27, 2012

Part 3

You can see the rafts and chutes repacked and ready to be stowed back on the ship. The crane lifted them into place...that's why the ship had to be turned at the dock, to allow the crane access to the side of the ship from which the rafts had been deployed.
At some point during this process, the tarps in which each chute/raft combination were wrapped prior to being put in large white drums for storage on the ship had to be retrieved from the water where they laid. In what I'm sure was an unsanctioned move, a dockworker climbed out on a bumper to try to pull them in. All they'd need is for someone to be hurt during a safety drill!
The intent of these chutes and rafts is that they could be deployed when the ship tilted so much to one side (as with the Concordia) so that the life boats become unlaunchable. They basically provide redundancy in evacuating people from a sinking ship. The Concordia surely had these same rafts; why they weren't deployed is anyone's guess.