Tag: safety measures

An effort to reduce toxic threats to public health and safety The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) will test the ability of two industry-sponsored companies to respond to oil spills during an exercise on the Columbia River near Cathlamet on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011.As part of the spill preparedness drill, Clean Rivers Cooperative and Marine Spill Response Corp. will deploy boats, oil-skimming equipment and oil-containment boom in the river Tuesday morning.Ecology will observe and evaluate the exercise. No oil will be released."Being prepared to respond to oil spills is a critical part of Ecology's effort to reduce toxic threats to public health and safety, and our environment," said Ecology Spill Preparedness Manager Linda Pilkey-Jarvis. "The drill helps ensure that companies operating commercial vessels on the Columbia River can mount a rapid, aggressive and well coordinated response to a spill and help minimize harm to our shorelines."Clean Rivers Cooperative is a member-based, non-profit organization dedicated to responding to and preventing maritime oil spills. The Maritime Safety & Fire Association, one of its member companies based in Portland is helping sponsor the Oct. 11 drill.The association maintains an umbrella oil-spill contingency plan covering more than 600 commercial vessels calling in the Columbia ...

MSC.88 outcome MSC.1/Circ.1387 Please find here below the following useful informationIMO Revised Guidelines for the Approval of Fixed Water-Based Local Application Fire-Fighting Systems for use in Category a Machinery Spaces (MSC/CIRC.913)

MSC.88 outcome MSC.1/Circ.1386 Please find here below the following useful informationIMO Amendments to the Revised Guidelines for the Approval of Equivalent Water-Based Fire-Extinguishing Systems for Machinery Spaces and Cargo Pump-Rooms (MSC/CIRC.1165)

Debt of shipping to the best-known wreck It is a terrible thing for the shipping industry to admit that the world's best-known ship - the one that members of the public will always cite when asked to name "a merchant ship" is the Titanic.It seems an awful condemnation upon one of the world's most essential industries that of all the hugely successful, commercially brilliant and technically astounding ships that have emerged from shipyards over the past 100 years, everyone remembers the one that lasted a matter of weeks after its delivery, sinking with heavy loss of life on its maiden voyage.The centenary of this notorious casualty is almost upon us and the Titanic industry, which will see every form of media event, the commissioning of at least two major exhibitions in Belfast and Southampton , and dozens of literary efforts making more money than the doomed ship ever did. And perhaps the modern marine transport industry should not grudge this wellspring of nostalgia, in that it might make more people think, perhaps even in an over-sentimental fashion, about ships and shipping.Perhaps the International Maritime Organization got it right when its recent Council meeting endorsed the suggestion of the Secretary-General Efthimios ...

Matters of marine safety Governments need to be cautious about making economies that impinge on matters of marine safety. This was the message that was given quite firmly by a UK Parliamentary Committee looking closely this month at the proposed cutbacks to the country's coastguard.The government has argued that modern technology can make it possible to reduce the number of marine incident stations around the UK and Northern Ireland drastically. "Modernisation" is the term for the procedure, and inevitably it will facilitate economies with the number of Coastguard officers, as just three highly sophisticated communication centres take over from those dispersed around the coasts. Additionally, and equally controversial, is the plan to allow "commercial interests" to take over the role of the four emergency towing vessels which provide safety cover around the coasts. Members of Parliament have attacked the proposals, which will see the costs of the coastguard trimmed by some 22% over the next four years. The difficulty the government - indeed any government hoping to make economies - faces is that in doing so it quite obviously incurs a risk that it will be charged with playing fast and loose with marine safety. There may be good technical ...