Of course OceanGate (and Stockton Rush’s estate) should pay for it. Maybe I’d feel differently if they had given any kind of a shit about doing things safely.
I just want to know, if it were me and my kids lost on a homemade raft would 4 countries send 10 ships, airiel surveylence , and the most advanced remote operating vehicles available for 4 days to try and find me? If not, they should pay the extra.
I’m kind of torn. Charging anyone sets bad precedent, but at the same time, if I rent a racetrack (like willow springs) I have to pay for corner workers, insurance, instructor, AND fire/rescue. If rich asshats want to go play, why aren’t they required the same thing? Since, you know, it’s likely shit is going to go wrong with experimental stuff.
Also, expending as much manpower as they did, while immigrant boats capsize, and kill people regularly, seems disproportionally like an overreaction. While they typically throw their hands up and say, “oh a boat capsized, and we looked for an hour, but everyone’s dead, sucks” when immigrants die.
I feel you. I think at a bare minimum anyone wanting to do something like this should be required to get some sort of insurance coverage that will help bear the cost of rescue/recovery if the worst happens.
There’s a… I don’t want to call it an “easy solution”, but there’s a pretty understandable and clear distinction that can be made here: If you’re offering a commercial service to people, and an investigation finds negligence on your part, the public should be able to sue to recoup at least some of the expenses.
I don’t think it’s all that slippery a slope. Not many deep sea private submarine rescue operations going on amidst the working class.
I think it should apply to all the typically “rich guy” endeavors. Like all the space tourism that’s already happening.
I think there needs to be a limit. In (Inland) search and rescue for example, they will do all they can to get you out, but if you’re injured they aren’t calling an ambulance (unless you desire so) and they don’t cover the cost of any kind of healthcare.
In this scenario, it would make sense to restrict or limit aid for non-millitary underwater recovery operations, especially those involving a submarine. The govt should not be bankrolling private companies’ experiments IMO unless there is a really good reason for it
Edit: added type of SAR
Ocean Gate should because of the amount of gross negligence
Though the families suing them should get first dibs on the company’s carcass, IMO.
I don’t mind emergency services being deployed, but they need to be evenly deployed. The higher priority was hundreds of drowning immigrants.
… in an uncoordinated nighttime voyage on an overloaded unlit blind boat …
In order to remain hidden as long as possible for a better chance to sneak into a country, they’re doing about as many things wrong as possible, including severely impacting the ability of rescue craft to get onsite in time.
Is the biggest risk still hypothermia in the warmer climes, if victims don’t drown immediately? Either case presents a really short window for rescue.
How do the same arguments not apply to the titan? It doesn’t appear they were doing anything correctly either, it’s just that the reason for it was negligence rather than desperation.
They were an ocean apart from each other and the deep-sea submersibles and hydrophones used in the Ocean Gate rescue would have been pretty much useless in the case of the refugee boat. So being upset about the resources spent on Ocean Gate is a bit unfair, it’s not like they were facing an either/or choice.
I’m not saying it was a misapplication of the resources for one versus the other. I’m saying that an inequal amount of resources is applied depending on “cool factor” or wealth of the victims.
I have no sympathy for Stockton Rush whatsoever, but search and rescue services are basic, essential, and should never be provided at a cost.
Search and rescue does not normally include anywhere near the extent of services given to looking for a lost private submarine.
What, then, is the appropriate amount of resources to spend on five people lost at sea in a fairly well-defined area?
Why are you asking me? I don’t know anything about the field. However, a quick search shows this was one of the most expensive S&Rs of all time, comparable to efforts in rescuing 33 stranded miners in chile, who were victims of an accident rather than their own decisions. My point is only that saying “search and rescue is important” doesn’t really work as well when we’re talking about people who consciously got themselves into an incredibly dangerous and unrescuable situation. I’d fully support sending out normal coast guard searches as we would for a lost boat, for example.
Put differently, if five people took a sailboat out into rough waters and lost contact, would several countries spend tens of millions of dollars looking for the wreckage? If not, then why would we do it for this case?
This is entirely notwithstanding that there’s immediate comparable evidence that the S&R was because the passengers were rich, since the coinciding disaster with the refugee boat near greece didn’t merit even a fraction of that amount of resource expenditure, so it’s pretty hollow to act like this was the normal response.
My point is only that saying “search and rescue is important” doesn’t really work as well when we’re talking about people who consciously got themselves into an incredibly dangerous and unrescuable situation.
When it comes to search and rescue of human beings, the circumstances don’t matter. It’s a last resort situation - a literal safety net.
Except apparently the circumstances did matter
They absolutely didn’t - a resue was attempted.
All the other things I just said do matter.
I could see a good case being made for rules that charge the rescuees a fine or fee if they were doing something knowingly and deliberately stupid that put them into the situation that required rescue, such as trespassing into clearly marked off-limits areas.
Whether this sub counts as that would be a matter for the courts, if such a rule existed.
I believe it’s international waters, and there are no laws surrounding submersibles, so I don’t think any laws would apply.
If the company can be nailed for gross negligence, I’m all for it, but that’s separate from charging for rescue.
The ship it was launched from is under some country’s flag, I would expect that that country’s laws apply to it. International waters aren’t a total legal free-for-all.
Horizon Arctic is flagged to Barbados, so you can commence holding your breath…now.
In order to not set a precedent of charging money for search and rescue services, they should just charge a special one-time 80% inheritance tax on his estate.
That instead sets the precedent of “we don’t need an actual law to seize your money, we can just decide we don’t like you on a case-by-case basis” which I would argue is much worse.
Make it a Darwin Award inheritance tax; only applicable if you died through massive personal negligence
We actually need search and rescue services for a lot of legitimate reasons. I don’t mind the occasional doofus helping to keep those skills sharp.
In general I’m all for the service being already paid for so that someone uses it when they need it. However in this case I feel like three billionaires, namely the Stockton rushes, should foot at least some of the bill here.
Eh, various navies and coast guards got a good training exercise out of it, so it wasn’t a complete waste. I’m sure SOSUS for example proved useful.
Due to the absolutely spectacular dumbassery involved in this OG should pay up.
This is a common debate.
There is a very clear reason why the coast guard and SaR organizations do not charge during crises, and as Canadians we should be a little better about this.
How much insurance will boat people have, for instance? Since it’s already risky due to overcrowding, and it’s an operation countries are trying to prevent, and since it’d then have no insurance or bond for rescues, should our response be to ignore them (any harder than it appears we did as a planet in this last case), and will that look any worse in comparison than it already does?
Historically the Resolution has been “it’s least-worst to humanity and removes a chilling effect of we do not recoup costs for rescues from the victims”, and it’s going to be difficult to successfully argue in the other direction without appearing cruel(er) to refugees. :-\
How much insurance will boat people have, for instance?
In the case of those dangerously overloaded boats full of illegal immigrants, I would think that the individual people shouldn’t be charged for rescue but the people who operate the boats should have the book thrown at them. They’re the ones who are putting those people in danger and so if they get hit with massive fines I’d be fine with that. The people on board as passengers weren’t responsible.
I wouldn’t want there to be charges for “normal” rescue operations, such as if you go out in an otherwise sound boat and through simple misadventure it ends up sinking. Nobody did anything wrong in a situation like that.
This would be an excellent response if ordinary search and rescue efforts had been employed here.
