Paths to Reducing Serious Maritime Incidents and their Impact

Such incidents are all very serious – the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal made headline news and had billion dollar consequences. The example of the Ultra Large Container Ship Maersk Honam highlights what a devastating impact fire can have onboard such a vessel. In 2018, the 353m vessel caught fire southeast of Oman en route from Singapore to Suez. The fire was halted at the superstructure and crew members were evacuated. Tragically, five died.

It took five days to bring the fire under control, and seven more weeks before the vessel could be towed to a suitable port of refuge – Jebel Ali in the UAE – for unloading. It was carrying 7860 containers, equivalent to 12,416TEU, when the incident occurred.

While it is not always reported in the media, finding a port of refuge can be extremely challenging – the example of the container ship X-Press Pearl, proves the point. The2743TEU capacity X-Press Pearl eventually sank after it was refused refuge by two ports following a fire – effectively turning what should be a manageable incident on a large vessel into a total loss.

Enough is enough, the industry is going through the gears to reduce serious maritime incidents and notably the devastating impact of fires generated by the increasing transport of lithium-ion batteries both in containers or within electric vehicles in car carriers and generally along the supply chain. An array of resources are being harnessed as well as serious thought being given to optimising distressed cargo management

Further, it should be borne in mind that not all fires onboard vessels occur at sea – a major fire took place in the port of Hamburg in 2016 with the 9000TEU capacity CCNI Arauco and, of course, as the recent depot incident in Bangladesh proved container generated fires on land can also prove catastrophic.

There is growing recognition that the increasing incidence of vessel fires in particular needs to be brought under control with special reference to containerships and ro-ro vessels/car carriers. Two recent initiatives highlight this – the publication by several industry bodies at the end of March of The Lithium-ion Batteries in Containers Guidelines and preceding this, in February, the major liner operators Evergreen Line, HMM, Maersk, the Offen Group and ONE as well as Seaspan and Lloyd’s Register joining Safety Accelerator and its Safetytech Accelerator Cargo Fire & Loss Innovation Initiative to, “find and advance technology innovations from across maritime and other industrial applications to reduce the incidence of cargo fires or cargo loss overboard.”

The article on p28, authored by BMT, also makes clear that there is significant scope to refine the approach to extract more value from distressed cargo involved in a major incident and similarly the article from Rightship on p31 underlines the major role data can play in understanding and thereby reducing in-port incidents.

Positive moves are afoot, and not before time!