Due to the tragedy of the ferry “Estonia” – a new version: a hole 4 m long was detected

Estonia sank on September 28, 1994 during a severe storm in the Baltic Sea, sailing from Stockholm to Tallinn. Of the 989 passengers and crew on board, only 137 survived.

According to M. Kurm, a 4 m long and 1.2 m wide drilled hole was found on the starboard side of the ferry; it is below the waterline, but it also reaches the car deck.

Delfi has already written about the Lithuanian who escaped the ferry.

“I think it means that Estonia has come across something big enough that it could have pierced the case,” the expert told Postimees TV.

“Breaking overboard would require, for example, a small fishing boat to crash into the hull of a ferry at a speed of four knots,” he added.

According to M. Kurm, this excludes the possibility that the broken panel collided with the hull of the ferry.

“In this case, this panel had to be 20 times bigger,” the expert noted. “It had to be a collision with an object like a ship.”

According to the former head of the accident investigation commission, the part of the side where the hole was found never touched the seabed, so the hull could not have been damaged in this way.

Mr Kurm pointed out that the perforated part of the hull was visible in 1994, but later the Swedish authorities flooded the sunken ship with gravel.

“It is very likely that the object found by Estonia was actually a submarine,” emphasized the former state prosecutor.

“The question is what this submarine did on the Estonian route. During that period, Swedish military exercises were held at the site. The second version, the submarine, blocked Estonia because it contained confidential information. I tend to think that the second version is correct, ”said the expert.

With the release of a new Discovery documentary on the sunken ferry, Estonian Prime Minister Yuri Rat announced on Monday that a new investigation into the circumstances of the disaster, led by Estonians, would be carried out as it came to light. new information.

The team of filmmakers of the five-series documentary Estonia: A Funnet Som Endrer Alt found a 4 meter diameter hole in the hull of a sunken ferry that had previously been partially hidden by the seabed, Postimees reported.

Will again investigate the ferry disaster in Estonia

“A new technical study of the new circumstances of the Estonian disaster is necessary,” said Ratas. “In our opinion, the technical studies will include underwater observations, and we have informed Finland and Sweden.”

According to the Estonian Prime Minister, the three countries agreed that Estonia would lead the new investigation. “We want the truth to come out,” said Rats.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu added that the new investigation will be carried out on the basis of the final report from 1997.

“The new technical study does not mean that the 1997 report is annulled,” he said.

However, according to the minister, the new study will be fully autonomous: “We do not plan to add a few pages to the 1997 report. And if important new information is discovered, the parties will study it together.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Martas Luikas said the makers of the Discovery TV documentary about the Estonian disaster had contacted Estonian officials at the start of the coronavirus crisis and said the underwater filming last fall The past had probably revealed new circumstances.

“We saw those shots on August 12 and although I am not a shipping specialist, it was obvious that the hole on the right side of Estonia was something new,” he said.

In September, the shots in question were reviewed by technicians, who stated that the board was hit from the outside and that the violations were not committed during the explosion.

The team of filmmakers landed on a sunken ferry and found a 4m diameter hole in its hull, which was previously partially hidden by the seabed, writes the Postimees newspaper.

“It cannot be ruled out that these breaches have had a catastrophic effect,” Jorgen Amdahl from the Faculty of Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim said in a series of documentaries posted on Discovery’s Nordic streaming platforms on Monday. .

The five-series documentary “Estonia: a discovery that changes everything” (Estonia – funnet som endrer alt) was made by a production company commissioned by the Norwegian company “Discovery”.

The Estonian ferry, built by the German Meyer Werft in 1980, left on its last voyage from Tallinn to Stockholm on September 27, 1994 at 7 pm 15 minutes. There were 803 passengers and 186 crew members on the ferry.

At sea, the ferry hit large waves and roughly half, already on September 28 from 0 pm 55 min. at 2 pm 3 min., sunk. The site of the disaster is near the Finnish city of Turku.

137 people on the ferry survived and 852 died. Most of the dead were unable to escape when the ferry began to sink. 501 Swedish citizens and 285 Estonian citizens were killed. In all, there were citizens of 17 states on the ferry.

Findings from a study published by Estonia, Finland and Sweden in 1997 show that water began to flow inside the ship due to a failure in the car’s deck door.

“September 28, 1994 in Tallinn was cool but sunny, and the first radio announcements about an incident on a ferry in the Baltic Sea probably didn’t seem very important to many at first. Well, yes, an accident. Well, yes , the rescue operation. But will it save you? What could happen to that giant? And then, surprise … already pretty quickly, in the next few hours, the real situation began to clear up. “Everyone who saw the operation anxiously ‘from the shore’ – relatives, friends, officials, journalists – realized the nightmare result of this simple arithmetic operation: the number of people sailing on the ferry should be deducted as much as possible from them, “he wrote. BBC .

The Estonian ship’s owner-operator did not have exact data on how many people sailed on the ferry in the first days; there was a lot of confusion trying to figure out which of the passengers and crew was actually sailing the ferry. Just a few days later, a full list of swimmers was compiled.

Estonia was sunk in a storm near Finland in 1994. 989 people sailed on the ferry. Only 137 passengers managed to escape, including the only Lithuanian Artūras Tamašauskas. The disaster claimed the lives of 852 people, including 3 Lithuanians.

Nearly a hundred swimmers made it to the life rafts, but died from the general cooling of their bodies until rescuers arrived. The remaining 750 people drowned along with the ferry. This is the biggest disaster in Europe since World War II in the Baltic Sea. Sweden lost 501 people and Estonia 285 people. Residents of Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Russia and other countries drowned.