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(Updated) Teacher who organised ferry trip kills himself as hopes fade for 300 children
Last edited Sat Apr 19, 2014, 12:53 PM - Edit history (1)
Original information from here:
Teacher who organised ferry trip kills himself as hopes fade for 300 children
Behind subscription wall: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article4066907.ece
More information here:
Deputy head teacher rescued from South Korea ferry found hanged
Teacher found in apparent suicide next to gymnasium set up for survivors after rescue from ferry that sank with hundreds of his students trapped inside
By AFP10:30AM BST 18 Apr 2014
A deputy head teacher rescued from a sinking South Korean ferry that sank with hundreds of his pupils on board was found dead on Friday, in what media reports said was an apparent suicide.
Local police on Jindo island said the body of Kang Min-Kyu, 52, was found near the gymnasium where relatives of the 268 people still missing from the ferry disaster have been staying.
"The precise cause of death is still under investigation," one police official told AFP.
Yonhap news agency cited police as saying he was found hanging from a tree having apparently committed suicide.
Of the 475 people...
Teacher found in apparent suicide next to gymnasium set up for survivors after rescue from ferry that sank with hundreds of his students trapped inside
By AFP10:30AM BST 18 Apr 2014
A deputy head teacher rescued from a sinking South Korean ferry that sank with hundreds of his pupils on board was found dead on Friday, in what media reports said was an apparent suicide.
Local police on Jindo island said the body of Kang Min-Kyu, 52, was found near the gymnasium where relatives of the 268 people still missing from the ferry disaster have been staying.
"The precise cause of death is still under investigation," one police official told AFP.
Yonhap news agency cited police as saying he was found hanging from a tree having apparently committed suicide.
Of the 475 people...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/10774713/Deputy-head-teacher-rescued-from-South-Korea-ferry-found-hanged.html
OpEd from NYT:
"“Evacuation dynamics,” a discipline at the intersection of physics, engineering, architecture and social psychology..."
Learning From Korea’s Disaster
By EDWARD TENNER APRIL 18, 2014
PLAINSBORO, N.J. — With hope fading for the rescue of 271 passengers, most of them high school students, who remain missing after the South Korean ferry Sewol capsized and sank Wednesday, it is not too early to draw lessons from the disaster. South Korea’s early response was to point to “human error” and seek the arrest of the ferry’s captain, first mate and another crew member. But it’s worth keeping three points in mind as investigations proceed.
First, few great disasters have one single explanation. In some cases imagination fills in an incomplete story. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 almost certainly wasn’t started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow overturning a lantern. Folklore scholars have a word — sharpening — for the addition of detail after original information is lost. And the spark is often beside the point. Catastrophic loss of life and property usually signals a fateful conjunction of unlikely circumstances, none of which might have been fatal in itself. If Chicago hadn’t been a boomtown built mainly of wood; if there hadn’t been a prolonged drought; if the air had been calm instead of windy — etc., etc., etc.
This principle applies, too, in most of the great peacetime shipwrecks. Consider the Titanic. The flat sea and atmospheric conditions prevented lookouts from recognizing the iceberg before it was too late. The scraping of sea ice against the hull led to a failure of riveted plates. There were problems communicating with other ships. No matter how many levels of safety we devise, there are always a few cases in which the loopholes in each of them align. Perhaps the ferry experienced such a fatal conjunction.
Second, organizations may be more to blame for disasters than individuals. Agencies and corporations nominally committed to safety may ignore good engineering practice to meet what they consider urgent goals. In her study of the 1986 Challenger launch decision, the sociologist Diane Vaughan pointed to what she called the “normalization of deviance.” A culture like NASA’s that becomes overly concerned with budgets and timetables may no longer recognize that it is encouraging its members to take unacceptable risks to meet them. In the Sewol’s case we need to look beyond the captain to the rest of the officers and company procedures. Roll-on-roll-off vehicle decks like the one on the Sewol can make ships unstable if flooded. Was there special vigilance to protect against damage from loose equipment? The communications officer has said he had not participated in evacuation drills and didn’t have time to read the evacuation manual: Were he and other officers provided with pocket summary charts?
At the other extreme, excessively strict accountability can bite back....
Learning From Korea’s Disaster
By EDWARD TENNER APRIL 18, 2014
PLAINSBORO, N.J. — With hope fading for the rescue of 271 passengers, most of them high school students, who remain missing after the South Korean ferry Sewol capsized and sank Wednesday, it is not too early to draw lessons from the disaster. South Korea’s early response was to point to “human error” and seek the arrest of the ferry’s captain, first mate and another crew member. But it’s worth keeping three points in mind as investigations proceed.
First, few great disasters have one single explanation. In some cases imagination fills in an incomplete story. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 almost certainly wasn’t started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow overturning a lantern. Folklore scholars have a word — sharpening — for the addition of detail after original information is lost. And the spark is often beside the point. Catastrophic loss of life and property usually signals a fateful conjunction of unlikely circumstances, none of which might have been fatal in itself. If Chicago hadn’t been a boomtown built mainly of wood; if there hadn’t been a prolonged drought; if the air had been calm instead of windy — etc., etc., etc.
This principle applies, too, in most of the great peacetime shipwrecks. Consider the Titanic. The flat sea and atmospheric conditions prevented lookouts from recognizing the iceberg before it was too late. The scraping of sea ice against the hull led to a failure of riveted plates. There were problems communicating with other ships. No matter how many levels of safety we devise, there are always a few cases in which the loopholes in each of them align. Perhaps the ferry experienced such a fatal conjunction.
Second, organizations may be more to blame for disasters than individuals. Agencies and corporations nominally committed to safety may ignore good engineering practice to meet what they consider urgent goals. In her study of the 1986 Challenger launch decision, the sociologist Diane Vaughan pointed to what she called the “normalization of deviance.” A culture like NASA’s that becomes overly concerned with budgets and timetables may no longer recognize that it is encouraging its members to take unacceptable risks to meet them. In the Sewol’s case we need to look beyond the captain to the rest of the officers and company procedures. Roll-on-roll-off vehicle decks like the one on the Sewol can make ships unstable if flooded. Was there special vigilance to protect against damage from loose equipment? The communications officer has said he had not participated in evacuation drills and didn’t have time to read the evacuation manual: Were he and other officers provided with pocket summary charts?
At the other extreme, excessively strict accountability can bite back....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/learning-from-koreas-disaster.html
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Organizing the trip did not make him responsible for the accident happening. I would guess that survivor's guilt would be horrid for any adult that survived while children perished.
