Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [97]
But as Härstedt worked through the deliberation phase, he noticed something strange about some of the other passengers. They weren’t doing what he was doing. “Some people didn’t seem to realize what had happened. They were just sitting there, totally apathetic.” Not just one or two people, but entire groups of people seemed to be immobilized. They were conscious, but they were not reacting.
Härstedt climbed up the stairwell, fighting against gravity. Out on the deck, the ship’s lights were on and the moon was shining. The full range of human capacities was on display. One man stood to the side, smoking a cigarette, Härstedt remembers. Most people strained to hold on to the rolling ship and, at the same time, find life jackets and lifeboats. Some reassured each other. Härstedt helped an injured woman find a life jacket. Others grabbed life jackets off the backs of fellow passengers, survivors would later tell investigators. To complete the nightmare, the passengers and crew had severe problems unhooking the lifeboats. They could not find directions for the automatic releases nor could they force the rusted manual parts to work. The life jackets—mandatory in fifty-degree water with waves up to twenty-eight feet high—were also maddeningly hard to use. The straps were too short—or at least it seemed that way. Many were tied together in bundles of three, further slowing the process. As the ship continued to capsize, the water around it filled with floating, empty life jackets.
But here, too, there were people who did nothing. In the middle of this frenzy, certain people seemed petrified. British passenger Paul Barney remembers groups of people standing still like statues. “I kept saying to myself, ‘Why don’t they try to get out of here?’” he later told the Observer. “They just sat there…being swamped by the water when it came in,” one passenger said. Another passenger saw about ten people lying on the deck near the bulkhead. He threw life jackets to them, but they did not react. One passenger was seen entering a lifeboat, which was still secured in place, and then calmly lying down inside, making no effort to launch it.
Later, when interviewed by the police, some survivors would say they understood this behavior. At some point, they, too, had felt an overwhelming urge to stop moving. They only snapped out of this stupor, they said, by thinking of their loved ones, especially their children.
At 1:50 A. M., just thirty minutes after its first “Mayday” call, the Estonia vanished altogether, sinking upside down into the sea. Moments beforehand, Härstedt had jumped off the ship and into the sea. He climbed onto a life raft and held on. He would stay there for five hours, waiting to be rescued. At the start, there were about twenty other people on the raft. By the time the helicopter arrived, only seven, including Härstedt, were still alive.
All told, only 137 people survived the disaster. Investigators would conclude that the ship sunk because the bow to the car deck had come unlocked, and the Baltic Sea had come gushing into the ship. Most of the 852 victims were entombed in the Estonia, where most of their bodies remain to this day.
What did the immobilized people on the Estonia have in common with Clay Violand at Virginia Tech? They were all under attack and felt trapped. They were also extremely frightened, more frightened than most of us have ever been. But in the case of the Estonia, the freezing response may have been a natural and horrific