“But if you are going to rely on them, you need to build a good relationship with them and make them aware of what likely hazards exist, what your own procedures are, and what are the limits of your own capability.”<\/p>\n
There is often a lack of communication between terminal operator and port authority, too, he says; when something goes wrong, they end up “looking at each other”.<\/p>\n
He says most incidents involving ports fall into one of four categories – fire, spill, collision or vandalism. Ports must put in place clear operational procedures to minimise the risk, of course, but plans for responding to and containing any incident are vital.<\/p>\n
Ports also need to give more attention to “maximising public confidence” in their actions in the event of a disaster or emergency, says Mr Majumdar. “The public should know that there is an accident, that there are consequences, but that they are being managed and contained and you are on top of the situation.”<\/p>\n
This will only work through a collaborative approach with emergency services, local authorities and other companies and groups involved, he says.<\/p>\n
“There are four key questions. Has anyone been hurt? People always come first and no matter what happens, address that issue first. Is there property damage? People need to know. Are there environmental issues, for example noxious gas escaping from a tank? This is going to get people’s attention. And finally, the economy – how does this incident affect the business\/company, and what are the alternative arrangements?”<\/p>\n
It is vital to nominate a spokesman to deal with the media and public relations; all announcements should be made through that person, who must themselves be continually briefed, says Mr Majumdar.<\/p>\n
“Acknowledge that the media have a job to do. You don’t want them to report untruths or misinterpret what has happened, so whatever you say has to be totally factual. Tell them what has happened, what you are doing about it and when you think you are likely to be up and running again. ‘I don’t know’ is never an answer. You need to be professional and you can’t pull the shutters down.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ports and terminals are generally not geared up to deal with majoremergencies and rely heavily on emergency services, says portsconsultant Budha Majumdar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}