Thursday, January 30, 2020

The 'Floating-Barrier' Idea

Over the past year or two, if you've watched migrant news, there's a continual path being used to 'float' migrants from Turkey over to Greek islands.  In the vast majority of boat-trips attempted, the idea is that some Turkish guy will put 100 folks on a raft, and tow them to within a couple miles of some Greek island, and the boat will drift over to the island (sooner or later). 

The Greeks are fairly peeved at this point, and have thousands of migrants on various islands....awaiting their 'golden' ticket to Europe.  Some of them have been waiting three years, and that ticket has yet to arrive.  Total sitting in the camps on the various islands?  Roughly 40,000. 

The Greeks?  They need something to convince people to give up on the raft idea.

So N-TV (German commercial news) brought this up today.....a floating barrier.

The barrier itself?  Greeks say it'd be three kilometers long (1.8 miles).  It would go up....with nets....to about one-meter above the water level.  The cost of one single barrier?  The ballpark figure is 500,000 Euro (I assume delivery included).

The idea of going around the barrier?  I sat and pondered over this idea.  You often rely upon currents to bring you to the right isle.  If you parked the raft a kilometer north, to miss the net.....you probably would miss that isle because the drift angle would go differently, and you'd drift for another couple of days before you hit another isle.  I kinda doubt that the raft would last that long (usually, they are cheaply made). 

It's a curious solution and one has to wonder if the EU will fund the idea for the Greeks, or if the Greeks pull the money out of their own pocket. 

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