Every time I travel on the Gozo ferry I watch with bemusement the ‘safety video’. It would be funny were it not so serious.
In an emergency the sea will very likely not be calm, nor will the ship be level. The majority of passengers travel on the main deck, but there is not one single life jacket there. They are all locked away on the upper deck, something that the Gozo Channel Company thinks is perfectly acceptable.
The ‘safety video’ shows staff patiently helping a disabled person up the stairs. No one is wearing a life jacket, because of course they are still going up to get them. In reality, the stairs, if they are climbable at all, would be full of panicking people. Also what happens to disabled people who are in wheel chairs?
The ‘safety video’ goes on to show an evacuation from the ferry onto life rafts down a shute from a perfectly level vessel in perfectly calm seas. Since the ferry will probably be listing, the shutes will not be deployable from either side of the boat, as was the case with the recent Costa Concordia disaster.
There are just eight exits from the enclosed seating areas on the main deck, but when the ship lists over, they will in all probability be reduced to just four. Those heavily sprung doors are fairly impossible to open from a level deck; now imagine being in water trying to open them above your head with no deck to stand on, and crucially, with no life jacket.
If the vessel is sinking, passengers inside will have to float on the water without a life jacket until rescued. The windows are impossible to break and they do not even havequick-release mechanisms that passengers or rescuers can use to remove them.
If the Gozo Channel Company executives and their safety officers cannot visualise what will happen in an emergency, then they need look no further than the ferry disaster in South Korea.
If you want to stand a better chance of survival on the Gozo ferry, then travel on the upper deck or outside on the main deck, but wherever you are, it’s best to make sure that you bring your own life jacket!