Tragedy was in the making for many years
Let's see. This was a basic roll-on roll-off ferry from 35 years ago, upon which the made a modification to add several decks for passengers, by engineers in a third world country given an impossibly tiny budget and no safety oversight. Think, "ridiculously top heavy" Possibly the 5 life rafts we see, with 5 more on the other side, were the originals before the modification. If this was the USA, the would have added additional life rafts packed into roll off containers, but they would only have been deployable if the boat sank slowly. Even if the additional life rafts were there on those roll off containers, that may not have helped. Possibly the boat went down fast, due to being top heavy and any initial water that got below decks, sloshed back and forth enough to force open the doors the vehicles used to roll in/out. Not surprised the SOS was not heard from shore. There could have been many obstacles to getting a message out, and maybe they only used VHF with a range of 30 miles (they were 40 miles from shore). Maybe we will find in the months ahead, that the whole thing was safe, and either a freak of nature or human error was made. But, I would be hard pressed to believe that towering high ship was safe.
