ESL Blogs

Writing Challenge - From the News Archive

Cruise Ship Disaster in Italy: 17 January 2012

Discussion Question: Should a crew wait for all of passengers to be safely off board a damaged vehicle before abandoning it? What about "survival instincts"?

 In order to answer the question I'll try to be reasonable , because this question faces complex human issues: right to life, right to security, right to protection to name a few.

 I notice when it comes to the wreckage of the cruise ship "Costa Concordia" we have to analyse what right should bear in mind before anything else, and for sure the leading right is the right to life.

 I believe when you're at the position of a trained and responsible employee, whatever be your professional performance field, you have the right to think priority about the customer's security  to just later on thinking about your own security . Applying this reasoning to the case, the ship's employees had surely the professional and mainly ethical duty to protect the passenger's lives without hesitation, before worrying about themselves.

 The attitude of the cruise ship commander charged with abandoning the ship before passengers evidences us the superposition  of values nowadays:  egocentrism, dishonesty and lack of professionalism over humanitarianism, ethics and professionalism.

 Having said that,  I don't wanna claim I deny  the survival instincts of the  ship's crew members in such an awful tragedy, but I  hold a superposition of priorities: the first goal in an action plan  should be the passenger's safety and the second one the protection of the crew lives. Even as everything in life we have to put priorities,  that case is not an exception to the rule. The case in my viewpoint sums up to the  ideas of granting priority, solidarism and professional responsability for the good-driving of a crowd of innocent passengers.

 To conclude, I'd say every transport company is completely in charge of leading its passengers to their final destinations in a safe way.