Tag: safety measures

Additional on-board life-jackets and limited visits to the bridge are among the new requirements Visits to the bridge are to be restricted and ships will have to carry more lifejackets under new cruise ship safety requirements agreed by the industry in the wake of the Costa Concordia disaster.To be implemented with immediate effect, the measures also make it mandatory for all members of the bridge team to agree the ship's course before the vessel sets sail. This was just a recommendation under current International Maritime Organisation rulings. The new requirement follows claims that Concordia's Captain, Francesco Schettino deviated from the ship's approved route to "salute" the residents on the island of Giglio.Thirty people died and two are still missing after Costa Concordia capsized off the coast of Giglio in January. A salvage team appointed last week is expected to take 12 months to move the wreck from the rocks it is sitting on.The three new policies are part of a major operational safety review by the European Cruise Council (ECC) and US-based Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). In February, they made it mandatory for cruise lines to hold the passenger safety drill before the cruise ship set sail.They come a ...

New cruise safety requirements are a start but do not go far enoughWhile the three new safety regulations announced today by the cruise industry are to be welcomed, I would have expected there to have been some something more substantial, given it has been more than three months since Costa Concordia capsized off the island of Giglio.Can it really have taken that long to decide that having more lifejackets stored on deck would be a good idea in case of an emergency? Or to require a bridge team to agree the ship's route and stick to it? Or indeed that bridge visits, at times when the captain needs to concentrate on manoeuvring the ship, are not a good idea?Like the requirement to hold the passenger muster drill before the ship sets sail, which was the first new safety requirement to come from the European Cruise Council (ECC) and US-based Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) operational safety review, these changes make so much sense you wonder why they were not mandatory before. At the very least, they should have been introduced in the days following the Concordia disaster.Despite Concordia and the recent spate of fires on ships, I remain convinced that ...

Call follows 2011 incident in which dozens of refugees were left to die in Mediterranean A boat full of migrants arrives at the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean in April 2011. Photograph: Ettore Ferrari/EPAEurope's leading human rights watchdog has called for an overhaul of policy on migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean following an incident last year in which dozens of Africans were left to die in a rubber dinghy despite their desperate appeals for help.In a significant about-turn, Nato expressed "deep regret" for any role it may have played in the tragedy - but the alliance was swiftly accused by Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock of a cover-up over the deaths. Hancock said he plans to raise the issue in parliament next week.On Tuesday a debate by the 47-nation Council of Europe on the fate of 72 migrants who set sail from Tripoli to Italy at the height of the Libyan war, only to run into trouble several hours later and end up drifting with the currents, united parliamentarians from across the political spectrum in anger at the huge and unnecessary loss of life.The story of the doomed vessel, first revealed by the Guardian in May 2011, ...

Passage Planning - Personnel Access To The Bridge - Lifejackets On behalf of the global cruise industry, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and the European Cruise Council announced that the cruise industry has adopted three new safety policies which are to be implemented with immediate effect.The announcement was made by Chairman of the European Cruise Council (ECC) and Member of the CLIA Executive Committee, Manfredi Lefebvre.Speaking at a major European Commission-organized Passenger Ship Safety event in Brussels, he outlined how these policies have been agreed to by the industry and represent the third such announcement arising from the cruise industry's Operational Safety Review.These three new policies, which go beyond even the strictest of regulatory requirements, address issues related to passage planning, personnel access to the bridge and lifejackets. Each of these three policies will be reported to the United Nations' International Maritime Organization (IMO) for consideration at their next session in May."As highlighted by these wide-ranging policies, we continue to take proactive measures to improve the safety of passengers and crew across the globe," said Christine Duffy, president and CEO of CLIA. "We look forward to working collaboratively to identify any additional operational issues that will achieve our longstanding goal ...

Focus on how best to organize and respond to a multiple casualty event aboard a cruise ship Dubai Maritime City Authority (DMCA), the government authority charged with regulating, coordinating and supervising all aspects of the maritime sector in Dubai, has announced that the Cruise Ship Emergency Response Task Force that was convened in September 2011 to address the challenges presented by the introduction of ever larger cruise ships to the UAE waters, hosted the first cruise sector mass casualty table top exercise and drill last week involving over eight hundred people .The Task Force, comprised of federal and local emergency responders, including the cruise industry, the Dubai Tourism, Commerce and Marketing Authority and coordinated by the DMCA, focused on how best to organize and respond to a multiple casualty event aboard a cruise ship in port or in near coastal waters, given that such a situation would require a significant amount of communication and coordination across public and private sector operations.The tabletop exercise, taken from real-life occurrences, simulated multiple casualties aboard a cruise ship outside of Port Rashid in Dubai.Costa Cruise Lines' FAVOLOSA volunteered to participate in the exercise. Captain Abdulla Al Hayyas of Dubai Maritime City Authority, acting as ...

Guidelines to address concerns related to alleged serious crimes and persons missing at sea The United Nations' International Maritime Organization (IMO) has agreed to a proposal put forward by the United Kingdom, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), and the Philippines to develop guidelines to address concerns related to alleged serious crimes and persons missing at sea. All twenty four delegations that spoke after the proposal had been presented expressed their appreciation and supported it without exception.Building upon an earlier proposal from CLIA, the United Kingdom led a coalition of government and industry stakeholders in support of the proposal.UK Shipping Minister, Mike Penning said:"Taking a cruise should be a safe and enjoyable experience. However we have been reminded in recent years that crime exists at sea as it does on land, and we should be certain that there are effective mechanisms in place to respond to this. I am grateful to those at the IMO, our partners CLIA and the Philippines for their help in making such valuable progress. I would now urge all other flag states to get behind this important proposal."CLIA President and CEO, Christine Duffy, said:"CLIA greatly appreciates the extensive leadership and commitment of Minister Penning, the United ...

How Employers Can Prevent On-Board Fires Though ships many seem like an unlikely place for a fire, fires can and too often do occur on-board. It is the responsibility of the vessel owner to ensure that measures are in place to prevent on-board fires which could injure or kill crewmembers.Maritime LiabilityThe Jones Act, passed in 1920, granted seamen and their families the right to hold maritime employers responsible for any injury, illness or death sustained during the course of employment on a ship caused by their employer's negligence. It is an employer's responsibility to provide adequate fire prevention, detection and training to all crew. Injuries or deaths caused by an on-board fire are often covered by the Jones Act.How Employers Can Prevent On-Board FiresThe best way to fight an on-board fire or explosion is to prevent it. Many on-board fires are caused by leaking fuel or other flammable chemicals on a vessel, especially on older ships that may have worn or faulty equipment. Employers have a duty to be diligent in inspecting and replacing worn equipment in engine rooms and any other place where fuel or chemicals could leak. Employers also have a duty to maintain properly functioning smoke and ...

Actions need to be taken around the second anniversary of the disaster Two years after a blowout on BP's Macondo well killed 11 men and triggered the largest oil spill in U.S. history, oil companies are again plying the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.Forty-one deep-water rigs are in the gulf. The vast majority of them are drilling new holes or working over old ones, while the other behemoths are idle as they await work or repairs. A brand new rig - the South Korean-built Pacific Santa Ana, capable of drilling to a depth of 7.5 miles - is on its way to a Chevron well.But three recent incidents in other parts of the world show just how risky and sensitive offshore drilling remains.In the North Sea, French oil giant Total is still battling to regain control of a natural gas well that has been leaking for nearly four weeks. Meanwhile, Brazil has confiscated the passports of 11 Chevron employees and five employees of drilling contractor Transocean as they await trial on criminal charges related to an offshore oil spill there. And in December, about 40,000 barrels of crude oil leaked out of a five-year-old loading line between a floating ...

Crew location device to improve safety of passengers and crew at sea Two Cambridge UK technology specialists have teamed up to improve the safety of passengers and crew at sea.The move by travel tech company Voyage Manager and real time location business, Omnisense, is timely following the Costa Concordia disaster and falls in the centennial of the Titanic's sinking.The partners said that despite many improvements in maritime safety in the intervening century, avoidable deaths continue. They say that the speed of the rescue process has proven to be a key determinant of survivability - but say this is hampered by a total lack of information about passenger and crew locations, necessitating a slow and painstaking room by room search of the vessel.Voyage Manager and Omnisense have teamed up to develop what they call the world's most advanced system for locating passengers and crew in real time, aimed at improving response times in the case of an emergency and reducing the chance of fatalities.The system delivers an easy to use, easy to manage method for tracking the location of people as they move about a ship, one which places no additional demands on its users.This is essential because it is by ...

International safety regulations became far stricter following the disaster