Lost at Sea - Malu Sara
24.02.2007
WOULD OUR GOVERNMENT ALLOW PEOPLE TO DROWN IN BOATS IT PROVIDED?
IF FACTS ABOUT THE SINKING OF THE VESSEL MALU SARA IN 2005 ARE ACCURATE, THEN APPARENTLY IT WOULD. THE QUEENSLAND CORONER IS ABOUT TO INVESTIGATE. TONY KOCH REPORTS
A FEW minutes after 2.15am on October 15, 2005, a mother and her child clung desperately to one another aboard a sinking boat, two of the five victims about to be claimed by the swirling waters of the Torres Strait that night. Another was Badu Islander Wilfred Baira, 35, the federal government-employed skipper of the 6.4m plate-aluminium vessel Malu Sara. He had no training on the boat, no instruction on using its satellite phone and was not licensed to drive any boat.
The Malu Sara, owned by the Department of Immigration and launched by then minister Amanda Vanstone on Thursday Island in 2005, was not equipped with a marine radio, a depth-sounder, a global positioning system or even a local maritime chart. The bilge pump was manually operated. The emergency position-indicating radio beacon provided by the Government was the outmoded analog type that responds only to low-orbiting satellites every one to two hours. It cost $200, compared with $500 for the later model that gives instant and constant positioning. The $200 EPIRB had an accuracy component to about 13km while the modern one is accurate to metres.
Queensland coroner Michael Barnes will be considering what contributions those omissions made to the tragedy when he convenes an inquest into the deaths in April on Thursday Island.
However, the strongly held belief among Torres Strait Islanders is that the deaths would not have occurred if the people in the boat had been white.
In supporting that charge, they point to the fact that the unlicensed skipper indicated at 4pm on October 14, 2005, that he was lost in fog and battling heavy seas with the boat taking water, yet nothing constructive was done in regard to rescue until almost five hours after the phone message that the boat was ``sinking fast''. In that time there had been 123 telephone calls between the boat and the Immigration Department office and rescue authorities, but no emergency situation was declared.
In 1985 a treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea provided a protected zone where islanders and coastal citizens of PNG could carry on their traditional lifestyles. That meant they could travel by boat. The aluminium dinghies in the region are known as ``TI [Thursday Island] Commodores''.
The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, as it was then called, has an office on Thursday Island, and one of its main duties is to monitor ``illegal incursions by persons or vessels''. To assist it with this, in 1998 DIMIA provided a small, fast boat to each of six islands across the strait: Badu, Dauan, Mabuiag, Mer, Yam and Yorke. Their function was to monitor the movements of people through the Torres Strait and detect illegal immigrants and boats. There are about 150 islands, reefs and coral cays in the Torres Strait, with the region's 8600 people living on only 18 of the larger land masses.
In 2005 the federal Government decided to replace the boats -- at a cost of $60,000 each -- and on August 29, 2005, then immigration minister Vanstone flew by government jet from Adelaide to Thursday Island to launch the fleet and was photographed happily with groups of the typically smiling local children.
Tested after the October 15, 2005, tragedy, the remaining five boats (the Malu Sara was never found) failed almost every standard safety and construction test. They were not watertight and, when motoring or at anchor, took water that could not be properly drained.
The boats were distributed to the six islands and then gathered at Saibai Island between October 8 and October13, when DIMIA held a workshop to familiarise skippers with their craft. Some, Baira among them, attended, but not all of them and not on every day.
According to the official Australian Transport Safety Bureau report, during the afternoon of Thursday, October 13, it was noticed that the Malu Sara had ``an alarming quantity of water entering the cockpit through the scuppers in the cockpit transom''. Put in layman's language, the hole (scupper) at the rear through which water was supposed to escape was below water level, trapping the fluid in the boat.
The water trapped in the Malu Sara was pumped out using the manual bilge pump and the DIMIA regional manager who was conducting the workshop, Garry Chaston, a former Australian Federal Police officer, ordered that it be checked through the night at anchor, which it was.
The ATSB report also states that, on the same afternoon, another boat skipper overheard a conversation by Baira, who was speaking by phone to Chaston back in the Thursday Island office.
``The gist of the conversation was the skipper telling the regional manager that neither he nor his crew member felt confident to take Malu Sara back to Badu Island (across 74km of open sea). He apparently asked the regional manager whether the two men could stay an extra day on Saibai Island and ship the boat back to Badu on a barge. Chaston is said to have declined permission and apparently indicated that the department could not cover the additional cost. During the investigation the ATSB sought to substantiate this conversation with Chaston. He did not recall the conversation or indeed any conversation with Malu Sara's skipper on the afternoon of October 13,'' the report states.
The report says Baira attended a barbecue on the island that night and was seen talking to other men at 3.30 next morning.
That sighting is significant as the ATSB concluded that fatigue through lack of sleep could have contributed subsequently to poor decision-making by Baira. At 12.22pm on October 14, Baira contacted DIMIA on Thursday Island to report he had left Saibai Island with five people on board: himself, another DIMIA officer, Ted Harry, Flora Enosa and her four-year-old daughter Ethena, and Valeria Faub.
The prevailing southeast wind was gusting to 17 knots, making the open sea very rough.
At 3.57 Baira called on the satellite phone to say he was ``a bit lost in fog'', and reported that everybody on board was well and they had plenty of fuel.
Chaston checked by phone with the local office at 7pm and was told the Malu Sara had not reached Badu Island and that the duty officer had told Baira to activate his EPIRB. At 7.15pm Chaston rang the police and the Water Police took over co-ordination of the search.
Chaston did not return to the office until 9.15 the next morning after being told at 2.15am that the boat was sinking with all on board.
The ATSB report says the Water Police sergeant rang the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in Canberra at 10.11pm, briefed it on Malu Sara's predicament and inquired about the next pass of a satellite, which would pick up the vessel's EPIRB transmission. The sergeant was told it was due about 11.40pm.
The report continued: ``Between about 7.45pm and 9.30pm the duty officer and police mission co-ordinator maintained telephone contact with the Malu Sara's skipper. In all, some 20 calls were attempted, of which 10 were successful. The skipper confirmed the EPIRB was transmitting. According to both the mission co-ordinator and the duty officer, Malu Sara's skipper seemed calm, and apart from being uncertain of his position, seemed to be in control of the situation.''
At 9.30 Baira reported water was entering the boat and the duty officer advised all on board to don life jackets.
More attempts were made to establish telephone contact between the Malu Sara and Thursday Island, but few were successful.
By midnight a satellite fix had been established (to within several kilometres) on the Malu Sara, and wind speed was about 18 knots.
The report says: ``At about 2.15am the skipper contacted the duty officer. His tone of voice had changed and now showed marked urgency. The skipper reported that they were taking on water rapidly and the vessel was sinking fast. They could see a light from Mabuiag Island and they did not seem far from the beach. The duty officer told him to make sure everyone had their life jackets on and to be sure to grab the EPIRB. All contact was then lost with Malu Sara's skipper and the others onboard.''
The duty officer then telephoned Chaston and the (police) mission co-ordinator and advised them of the conversation he had just had with Baira and that they needed ``urgent assistance''. The mission co-ordinator immediately contacted the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Canberra and confirmed the updated EPIRB position, as the next satellite pass was not until 3am. The wind was southeast averaging 15 knots with gusts to 23 knots.
Chaston did not come into the office.
Police say rescue options were considered only then, after they had been told the boat was sinking and nine hours after the first message that the skipper was lost in fog, with night approaching, and no navigation aids on board. Using a helicopter was ruled out because of cloud cover, so the police contacted the Thursday Island Volunteer Marine Rescue service. It took until 4.15am for the Pedro Stephen, a radar-equipped vessel, to be launched. It arrived at the Malu Sara's last known position at 7.49am to find ``confused seas, 20-25 knot southeasterly winds and 2m to 3m seas''.
One of Malu Sara's sister vessels, the Ngagalayg, had been launched at 5.55am at Mabuiag Island and reached
the last known position of the Malu Sara, about one hour before the Pedro Stephen. All that was found was the useless EPIRB floating in the water.
Chaston arrived at the DIMIA office at 9.15am and at 9.30 approval was gained to use a helicopter. The skipper of the Ngagalayg by this time reported water coming into his boat and said it was unsafe and headed for sheltered water. The report says that after 10.30am -- more than eight hours after the Malu Sara reported it was sinking -- ``the situation had become one of distress''.
A full-scale search was then ordered searching 4500 square nautical miles from the Torres Strait to the New Guinea coast and Irian Jaya during the next two days. Efforts to find the sunken boat, including the use of radar and police divers, failed.
On October 26, the body of the mother, Flora Enosa, was found by Indonesian fishermen near Deelder Reef, about 50 nautical miles northwest of Malu Sara's last known position. Her body was repatriated from Indonesia and she was later buried on Badu Island.
Tests on the five sister ships of the Malu Sara concluded they all had areas of poor welding; significant leaks between the cockpit deck and the void space below; inadequate and insufficient deck drainage; unreliable and inaccurate fuel gauges; and stability tests proved they would not float in an upright position when there was water in the cockpit. Locals and boat experts dispute the ATSB report, which states that Chaston ``did not consider that, by not supplying certain equipment, the boats were vulnerable in adverse weather, particularly poor visibility or if a vessel became disabled for any reason''.
As well, it was revealed there was no emergency plan in place at DIMIA to cover such a situation.
The findings of the ATSB report imply that ``poor decision-making'' by Baira, brought on by fatigue and disorientation, contributed to the tragedy.
That seems a novel twist when the report acknowledges that Baira was appointed by DIMIA as skipper, given no training in the running of the boat or the satellite telephone, it knew he was not licensed and he did not declare an emergency situation.
The report does not explore the natural corollary: that not having been trained, he did not know that he was the one who had to declare it. Had he been trained on the boat and its engines and the phone and, most important, had he been supplied and trained on the most basic navigation equipment including a GPS, depth sounder, chart and VHF radio, the situation almost certainly would not have arisen.
The report says the decision to embark on the 74km open ocean trip was, as always, that of the skipper. But how would an untrained, unlicensed person even be aware of that?
The report says the decisions of the mission co-ordinator and police were sound, yet they had no emergency plan and were unaware that the satellite phone being used had a facility to pinpoint the geographical position of the user. It was also trite for the report to describe the problem being faced by rescue authorities as ``novel''.
It seems strange that an untrained, unlicensed skipper in a boat can constantly call in saying the boat is taking water, he is lost and is without navigation aids without it raising alarm in those appointed to help in such situations. Despite the boat being unseaworthy and not fitted with the most basic safety and navigation aids, the most damning finding -- the one that explains everything -- was: ``There had been no reasonable organisational assessment of the risks associated with the operation of a fleet of small vessels in Torres Strait'' and ``the training provided to the skippers on the new Immigration response vessels was inadequate and, in the case of the Malu Sara's skipper, was nonexistent.''
In essence, for the want of a week's proper instruction on safe boating operation, and the expenditure of less than $4000 for a GPS, sounder, chart, bilge pump and VHF radio, five lives were lost.
The fleet was taken out of the water immediately following the loss of the Malu Sara and is in storage awaiting the coronial inquest.
The boats have not been replaced and the departmental explanation is that surveillance of illegal immigrants and ships in the Torres Strait is now being done by other agencies, including Customs and police.
Which, of course, also brings into question the real commitment of the federal Government to border protection when supervision of the entire Torres Strait -- the natural entry point from Australia's north -- is left to ad hoc attention of officials who are employed to do other duties entirely.
