Surviving the Titanic and the North Korean Rocket

YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
4/16-22/2012



For the past few weeks we have had a crescendo of panic and over acting over the North Korean rocket launch. While North Korea claimed that they were just launching a satellite, the United States and its allies were suspecting and accusing North Korea of developing an offensive ballistic missile.

In trying to avoid South Korean and Japanese airspace, the track of the rocket would pass over the East Philippine Sea close to the Eastern side of Luzon. Actually thousands of satellites, rockets and pieces of space debris are constantly orbiting around the earth all the time.

However, these are already orbiting and not yet falling down to earth. However, in order to send something into orbit at the present level of technology, a series of rocket boosters that detach and fall back to earth are employed. It was the third stage that was supposed to fall east of the Philippine island of Luzon.

However, the North Korean rocket malfunctioned soon after launch and did not get anywhere close to us. The hullabaloo and panic caused more harm to our wellbeing than the rocket that we feared. It was during the over acting in anticipation of the rocket launch that I recalled the natural and man-made disasters that we had not properly prepared for. Some of these had caused so much loss of life.

One glaring example was the collision and sinking of Sulpicio Lines’ Dona Paz and an oil tanker between Batangas, Romblon and Mindoro in December 1987. I was the Commissioner of the National Telecommunications Commission at that time. We monitored the compliance by civilian aircraft and ships of laws and regulations pertaining to radio communications and safety.

One of the important regulations then was that ships at sea should monitor the emergency frequency every other fifteen minutes. However, on an overnight trip to Cebu City from Manila, I could not raise any response on the standard Maritime emergency frequency. When I simulated an Emergency Call on board an aircraft over the Visayas, I got a response from a Quantas plane but none from any Filipino aircraft.

When the Titanic was sinking in the freezing North Atlantic, the radio operator of the nearest ship, the Californian had turned off his radio and had gone to sleep. The next nearest ship was the Carpathia but it took her almost till morning to get to the survivors in the lifeboats. In the freezing waters, a person would die from hypothermia in minutes,

Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The Titanic was the biggest and newest passenger liner in the world. She was owned by the White Star Line (the competitor of the Cunard Line. Both were British.). She was the middle ship in a class of three: the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. She was built by Harland and Wolf in the City of Belfast in the Island of Ireland which was part of the United Kingdom.

She was on her maiden voyage and had just been completed. On April 10, 1912, she left Southampton for Cherbourg in France, Queenstown in Ireland and New York. Just before midnight on April 14, 2012, she hit an iceberg south of Newfoundland. She sank in two hours and forty minutes. She only had twenty lifeboats. They could only carry 1,178 passengers and crew out of 2,224 on board. Following is an account from Wikipedia:

“At 11.40 pm (ship's time), lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of Titanic and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was too late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline. Five of the ship's watertight compartments were breached. It soon became clear that the ship was doomed, as she could not survive more than four compartments being flooded. Titanic began sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her angle in the water became steeper.

“Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. The ship's lifeboats only had enough space to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried its full complement, only about a third could have been accommodated in the lifeboats. The crew had not been trained adequately in carrying out an evacuation. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full. Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to become trapped below decks as the ship filled with water. A "women and children first" protocol was generally followed for the loading of the lifeboats and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard.

“Two hours and forty minutes after Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking suddenly increased as her forward deck dipped underwater and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates. As her unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship split apart between the third and fourth funnels due to the immense strain on the keel. The stern remained afloat for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it. At 2.20 am, it sank, breaking loose from the bow section. The remaining passengers and crew were plunged into lethally cold water with a temperature of only 28 °F (−2 °C). Almost all of those in the water died of hypothermia or cardiac arrest within minutes or drowned. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats though these had room for almost 500 more occupants.

“Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets and lamp, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach her before she sank. A nearby ship, the Californian, which was the last to have been in contact with her before the collision, saw her flares but failed to assist. Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic's earlier distress calls. 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, Titanic's original destination, while 1,517 people lost their lives.”