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Archive picture of the »Estonia«: Sonar devices are to be used
Photo:
Scanpix / picture-alliance / dpa
The sinking of the »Estonia« was one of the worst shipping disasters of the 20th century, and we are now going to re-examine how it came about.
A Swedish ship set sail near Nyköping on Thursday towards the site of the accident, and a second from Estonia was supposed to leave the Estonian capital Tallinn in the evening. That said the Deputy Director General of the Swedish Average Commission, Jonas Backstrand. The two ships are expected to arrive at the scene of the accident around midnight.
A memorial service was planned there on Friday before the underwater work on the wreck of the Baltic Sea ferry, which sank in 1994, began, Backstrand said.
Various sonar devices are used to examine the ship and the seabed.
Humans will not dive down to the wreck.
Preliminary assessments are to be made before more extensive investigations are planned for next spring.
One expects that the visibility under water will be better, said Backstrand.
So far, the torn off bow visor has been the cause of the accident
The »Estonia« sank on the night of September 28, 1994 with 989 people on board on her way from Tallinn to Stockholm off the Finnish south coast. 852 people died, only 137 survived, making the sinking the worst shipping disaster in Europe after the Second World War. According to the official investigation report from 1997, the torn off bow visor was the cause of the sinking. To this day there are still doubts about the cause of the accident. Survivors and bereaved relatives have long called for investigations to be restarted.
Documentary filmmakers lowered a diving robot to the wreck in September 2019.
Among other things, they discovered a hole several meters in size in the ship's hull, as they revealed in a documentary last year.
Because many of the dead could not be recovered, the wreck is under protection as a resting place and may not be visited according to an imposed tomb.
After the documentary filmmakers' revelations, Sweden introduced legal changes so that authorities can examine the finds more closely.
These changes came into effect on July 1st.
apr / dpa