Sea Diamond fiasco

The world's attention has shifted away from the Sea Diamond accident, but it is still #1 in the Greek news over here, not least because of what appears to have been total incompetence in handling the situation.

As Claire pointed out, it wasn't as if this disaster unfolded at high speed, it happened reallllllly slooooooowly.

Now, I'm no marine salvage expert, its true.

However, it strikes me that if you have a very large ship stuck in some shallow water, where it can be reached, worked upon, emptied of fuel and oil and made safe, deciding instead to tow it into some deeper water where it promptly sinks to a depth of 130 metres wasn't the brightest of ideas.

The biggest problem for the island of Santorini now is that the oil spilling from the vessel on the sea bed is uncontrollable, and what started as a small accident is turning into a major environmental headache.

The Sea Diamond was a Greek flagged vessel.

As ever, it looks like the criminal charges will be focussing on blaming the individual members of crew on the bridge at the time, rather than addressing the serious issues reported by passengers that she was allowed to sail with lifeboats not working, and an insufficient number of life jackets on board for the people she was carrying.