Very serious accidents every year despite efforts to improve safety
About once every three days a cargo vessel, tanker, or passenger ship is involved in an accident somewhere in the Baltic Sea, wrote Helsingin Sanomat. Last year 121 ships ran aground, collided, caught fire, or were involved in some other type of mishap.
According to figures put out by the Baltic Sea Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM) there has been an average of 125 accidents at sea each year since 2004 in spite of efforts by countries in the area to improve safety.
“We need new ideas” says Valtteri Laine, of the Finnish Transport Safety Agency TraFi. “Fortunately there have been few very serious accidents in the Gulf of Finland. Last year one fishing vessel sank off the Estonian coast, but it is always possible that something serious will happen.”
The two most hazardous places in the Baltic Sea are the Straits of Denmark and the area off Helsinki. There is much north-south maritime traffic between Helsinki and the Estonian capital Tallinn on a route that intersects with shipping going east and west in the Gulf of Finland. “The worst case scenario would be a collision between a tanker and a passenger ship”, Valtteri Laine says.
TraFi wants ships’ crews to report dangerous situations more readily.
“As there are 125 accidents a year, there might easily be ten times as many close calls”, Laine says. TraFi says that if ships would report dangerous situations to the shipping lines, and if the companies would inform officials about the events, officials could analyse the information and make recommendations on how to prevent further problems.
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Source: Helsingin Sanomat
