I do a lot of construction and repair work in a harbor with a lot of head boats. It is extremely common to be called out on gangway failures — luckily not so common that they fail catastrophically like here, but some of the ramp/pin assemblies I’ve seen in active service are a hairs breadth from a story like this one.
It is shocking to see the condition of ramps that these companies are putting thousands of passengers over per day. I have said many times to my partners that I find it shocking there haven’t been more gangway incidents. One operator in particular fabricates some of their ramps in-house, using design schemes that are simply inappropriate from an engineering perspective, and then piles 20+ people on at a time. It is quite frightening, and they have been told many times how dangerous it is, however they will not stop ostensibly until they have a major incident.