How to interpret the sinking of the yacht off Sicily?
Three days after the luxury superyacht Bayesian sank near the Sicilian capital of Palermo, hopes of finding survivors are fading. It now appears that seven people died, among them the British entrepreneur Mike Lynch. The incident has a nasty aftertaste for the press.
Selective sympathy
No one makes a fuss like this when refugee boats capsize, Avvenire complains:
“The outpouring of emotion is not surprising. ... You should always act like this at sea, you should always sympathise with the fate of the shipwrecked, you should always bring the survivors ashore as quickly as possible. But unfortunately these fundamental rules of humanity do not apply to all human beings. The contrast between the understandable sympathy for the passengers on the yacht and the political, media, one could even say 'anthropological' treatment of the shipwrecked on the voyages of hope from the southern coast of the Mediterranean is striking.”
It will get worse
Climate change will make accidents like this more common, the Irish Examiner believes:
“Record temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea this summer contributed to the freak storm that sank [the] superyacht ... . Sea temperatures in the Mediterranean have reached 30C, three degrees higher than average. ... Italy has become known by scientists as one of Europe's climate risk hotspots owing to a range of vulnerabilities including its geographical location, diverse topography and densely inhabited Mediterranean coastal areas. Within the last three years, the country has been hit by devastating floods, landslides, wildfires, record-breaking heatwaves and the collapse of a glacier in the Dolomites which killed 11 hikers. In 2023, there were 378 extreme climate events in Italy, an increase of 22 percent on 2022.”
A tragic accident, no more and no less
The conspiracy theories circulating on the internet after the shipwreck show a cynical society that no longer believes in coincidence, comments The Independent:
“On some level it's probably more comforting to believe there are dark forces at work, rather than accept that such freak accidents, such as the Bayesian's sinking, can and do occur – and that none of us, however rich or well-connected, is immune. But coincidences happen; that's the random and unfair truth of human existence, however tiny the chances might have been on paper. Just because something is mind-boggling and difficult to process, that doesn't make it anything other than what it seems.”