“When disaster strikes, our job is to mobilize massive assistance and to make sure it reaches those in need - fast! . Private sector expertise and corporate partnerships are critical to helping us save lives.”

- Josette Sheeran, Executive Director, World Food Programme

The establishment of reliable supply chains, and the ability to stand up Logistics Emergency Teams in disaster-prone areas is a critical element to the mitigation of further catastrophe.

Image courtesy World Economic Forum

Facilitated by the World Economic Forum, Logistics Emergency Teams (LET) are currently being provided pro bono by Agility, AP Möller-Maersk, TNT and UPS… four leading logistics companies, as well as the United Nations.   These organizations joined forces to  provide surge capacity during interventions in disaster-stricken areas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

LETs’ support through pre-agreed operating procedures and training includes:

• Logistics specialists (e.g. airport coordinators, airport managers and warehouse managers)
• Logistics assets (e.g. warehouses, trucks, forklifts)
• Logistics services (e.g. airlift, trucking, customs management)

In 2008-2010, LETs deployed in Mozambique, Myanmar, Haiti, Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan & Chile. Around 100 trained volunteers are currently on standby.

“As we move forward, we’re all looking to prevent supply chain disruptions from happening in the first place.  Making sure that critical components are in place in vulnerable regions.  This is how we see the partnership moving forward over the next few years.” – Sean Doherty, Head of Logistics and Transport Industry, World Economic Forum

More can be found regarding the Logistics Emergency Teams by clicking here.

This week marks the 23th anniversary of the worst offshore oil disaster in history.

The Piper Alpha was a North Sea oil production platform operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd. It accounted for around ten per cent of the oil and gas production from the North Sea at the time. The platform began production in 1976 first as an oil platform and then later converted to gas production. An explosion and resulting fire destroyed it on July 6, 1988, killing 167 men. Total insured loss was $ 3.4 billion. While the environmental damage was not as severe as the loss of the Deepwater Horizon, it remains world’s worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost.

The Amazing site Oil Rig Disasters writes about the Piper Alpha. they tell us:

On 06 July 1988, work began on one of two condensate-injection pumps, designated A and B, which were used to compress gas on the platform prior to transport of the gas to Flotta. A pressure safety valve was removed from compressor A for recalibration and re-certification and two blind flanges were fitted onto the open pipework. The dayshift crew then finished for the day.

During the evening of 06 July, pump B tripped and the nightshift crew decided that pump A should be brought back into service. Once the pump was operational, gas condensate leaked from the two blind flanges and, at around 2200 hours, the gas ignited and exploded, causing fires and damage to other areas with the further release of gas and oil. Some twenty minutes later, the Tartan gas riser failed and a second major explosion occurred followed by widespread fire. Fifty minutes later, at around 2250 hours, the MCP-01 gas riser failed resulting in a third major explosion. Further explosions then ensued, followed by the eventual structural collapse of a significant proportion of the installation.

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Piper Alpha Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Piper Alpha Photos

The Piper Alpha, as seen from a crew change helicopter, before the fire started.

All that remains of the oil platform after the devastating fire burns out.

The fire in full blaze. Imagine the heat that was generated.

A simulation of the survivability of the Piper Alpha’s Lifeboats.

The Blaze lit the night sky for miles in every direction.

Video Links:

• Piper Alpha Tribute Video
  
• Video animation of Piper Alpha Explosion
• “My Duke of Edinburgh” Movie Trailer

Links:

• 10 Deadliest Offshore Accidents
• BBC Report on this incident.
• Memories of the men who died
• UK Study on preventing large shipboard explosions
• Fire and Blast Information Group: Piper Alpha

Modern Day Oil Rig Tragedy – Gulf Of Mexico

For a look at a discussion on the cause and effect of the Deepwater Horizon – Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig Tragedy and the blog post “Deepwater Horizon Explosion – Breaking News From The Gulf Of Mexico” for a real time look at the events behind a modern oil rig explosion & fire.

Wait, the oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout wasn’t previously the worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

That’s right.  As mentioned in gCaptain.com’s list of History’s 10 Most Famous Oil Spills the previous record holder for worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was IXTOC I, a 2 mile deep exploritory well that blew out on June 3, 1979 in the Bahia de Campeche, 600 miles south of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.  On that day, a loss of drilling mud and circulation caused a blowout on the SEDCO 135 semi-submersible platform (Sedco has since been acquired by Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon) which was on lease to Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).  The IXTOC I well continued to gush oil at a rate of 10,000 – 30,000 barrels per day (or 140 million gallons total) until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980.

Today, the oil spill caused by the April 20th blowout of the Deepwater Horizon eclipsed the IXTOC I as the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico’s history, with an estimated 140.6 million gallons spilled.  According to AP, this calculation is based on the higher end of the government’s range of barrels leaked per day, minus the amount BP says it has collected from the blown-out well using two containment systems.

Today, June 15th 2010, marks the 104th aniversary of the General Slocum disaster, a twin-paddlewheel steamboat that caught fire and sank shortly after leaving Manhattan for a daytrip up the Long Island Sound. Of the estimated of the 1,342 people on board the vessel, 1,021 were killed, making the event the worst disaster in terms of loss of life for the New York metro area, a title it held for nearly 100 years.

In remberance of the event, here is a look at the book “Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum” by Edward T. O’Donnell provided by Failure Magazine:

When the twin-paddlewheel steamboat General Slocum departed Manhattan for Long Island Sound on the morning of Wednesday June 15, 1904, the 1,300-plus passengers on board expected nothing more than a relaxing day trip. The itinerary called for a short ride up the East River to Long Island’s Locust Grove, where the travelers would eat, drink and play to their heart’s content before being ferried back home. It’s safe to say that swimming was not one of the planned activities, as the mini-cruise called for participants to wear their Sunday best, and few early 20th century New Yorkers knew how to swim, anyway. But just minutes into the excursion a fire started below deck, and before long flames engulfed the boat, forcing the passengers into the water.

In the new book, “Ship Ablaze” (Broadway), historian Edward O’Donnell recounts the General Slocum story, a tragedy that took the lives of 1,021 people—mostly women and children. Initially, the fire and subsequent horrors were viewed as a simple, albeit catastrophic, accident. But when survivors reported the alarming disrepair of the boat’s safety equipment, it became evident that corporate greed, corruption and negligence were to blame for the casualties. Within a week, grand jury hearings were underway to determine culpability, but the victims’ families would get no satisfaction. The decisions and actions that led to the second-deadliest incident in New York’s history went almost entirely unpunished.

Read More at FailureMag.com

Above image via FailureMag courtesy of The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.

by Paul Drouin

The Cosco Busan accident, as with many others that have the same root cause, can be categorized into what I call the pilotage paradox. For on the one hand, we wish to confide the safety and con of the vessel to the pilot, yet on the other insist it is the crew and captain that are ultimately responsible and accountable for the safe conduct of the vessel.

In the seven minute interval between leaving the inner harbour and striking the bridge pylon, the pilot gave 13 helm orders without the slightest indication on the bridge of the Cosco Busan that anything was amiss. We know this because the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has left an amazing amount of information on their public docket website, including transcripts of the bridge voice recordings.

Leaving berth 56 (Port of Oakland) and passing under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is a relatively simple matter, even under blind pilotage conditions, as only two course changes bring you through the span. The Delta-Echo span of the bridge is wide, with a horizontal clearance of 673 meters, and is equipped with a RACON dead center of the span. For the Cosco Busan, winds were light and the vessel would be stemming the flood current as it passed under the bridge. This maneuver should not give an experienced 3rd Mate cause to sweat, much less an experienced pilot.

Under keel clearance was not great for the Cosco Busan, however, and as a consequence hydrodynamic forces on the hull caused by the flood tide would have been strong as the vessel’s sidebody came to obstruct the flow, which was setting at approximately 130° (T) near the bridge and anywhere up to 168° (T) further from the bridge.

While it has subsequently come to light that a passage plan for the pilot assisted portion of the voyage did not exist, the outcome would have probably been the same had there been one. Why? By many accounts, pilotage is still a “one-man-show” in most parts of the world. The intended route is almost inevitably “in the pilot’s head” and a “team approach” is in theory only. Under this paradigm, if the pilot, for any reason, loses situational awareness or makes the wrong decision, the team cannot correct, object or challenge. I have found, in my ten years as an accident investigator, that while crews and pilots are generally well informed of BRM techniques, they do not apply them when a pilot has the con.

I am aware of only one pilotage jurisdiction that has radically changed the way they do business. For ships arriving off Brisbane, bridge teams, and in particular the OOW, can expect to be treated differently by the pilot – they can expect to be treated as an effective member of the navigation team. Brisbane pilots have, for some years, introduced the following procedures;

• On boarding, the pilot asks to see the ship’s passage plan and the pilot takes the bridge team through his own passage plan during which time any variances in the two plans are discussed and resolved.

• The pilot will not take over the con of the vessel until the courses on the ships charts and the pilot’s passage plan are the same. Any variances are amended on the ship’s charts (paper), ENC, and radar.

• The OOW is asked to confirm with the pilot each alter course position as they approach to within 7 cables of the position as well as the mark used to alter course and the next course.

• The bridge team is encouraged to use the pilot’s Portable Pilot Unit (PPU) for comparison purposes – but not as a prime means of monitoring the ships position. The PPU is used as an aid to navigation, independent of the ship’s equipment.

This last point is reassuring as we now see a proliferation of pilotage authorities adopting the use of PPUs by their pilots. While this is not in and of itself a bad thing, if the bridge team is excluded from this equipment we would only be entrenching and validating the “one-man-show” paradigm.

Brisbane pilots must be congratulated for breaking the mold and showing the way forward to a better way of pilotage. Yet, their innovation was not without some resistance. When first developed, a number of their pilots were convinced they could never get foreign crews to competently participate in such an exercise. These preconceptions have proven quite wrong! Today, some six years along, Brisbane pilots have been pleasantly surprised by the competency and cooperation of ship’s crews. And the corresponding response from crews has been one of enthusiasm and a sense of genuine participation in the pilotage operation.

Some jurisdictions, such as those with short pilotage runs (but not exclusively so), may try and rationalize away these procedures as not practicable for their area. But in today’s world of electronic charts, DGPS, centralized vessel traffic control, and easy electronic communication, these are only feeble excuses – a death clutch to the old way of doing things. For a majority of pilotage areas today, there is no reason why standardized pilotage passage plans cannot be transmitted to the vessel beforehand so as to be noted on the charts, electronic or otherwise. When the pilot boards the vessel, any last-minute corrections or changes can be agreed upon, thus proceeding without delay – and everyone is singing from the same song sheet!

In a published report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) one can review circumstances similar to that of the Cosco Busan. While downbound in the river at night and while under pilotage, the container vessel Horizon was allowed to continue past the pilot’s customary course alteration point (see “A” in diagram) by approximately three cables, or, in other words by 50 seconds at a speed of 15 knots.

Vessel Horizon positions before and after grounding (from TSB report M04L0092)

No correction or challenge by the OOW was forthcoming as the vessel passed the pilot’s customary course alteration point and plowed into the mud bank on the south side of the River.

Suffice it to say that bridge ergonomics, BRM, as well as pilotage practices and procedures have a ways to go before the precise navigation of a large vessel by a pilot and crew of two or more can be accomplished in a seamless, complementary and consistent manner. With the proper planning, intended courses can be adhered to and mistakes, if made, corrected in time to avoid nasty consequences.

Additionally, maybe vessel bridges will have to change –possibly reduced in size and with a more ergonomic and compact layout to bring the team together. Better all-round visibility would be a great advantage as well. Since BRM was inspired by the air industry’s “cockpit resource management”, maybe so too should the designers of ship’s bridges be inspired by the airplane cockpit.

TSB report M04L0092 – Grounding of the Container Vessel Horizon, 2004.

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This post submitted by Paul Drouin is a condensed version of an article written for the September 2008 edition of Seaways Magazine and can be found HERE.

Captain Paul Drouin has over a decade of marine accident investigation
experience. He is a graduate of the Canadian Coast Guard College (class
of 81) and a licensed Master Mariner (Unlimited). After serving for 15
years on all manner of Coast Guard vessels (five as master), Paul moved
to a shore job as Marine Superintendant before beginning his
investigator duties in 1998. He is also founder of SafeShip, a company
dedicated to safer ships and safer crews. He lives in Lac-Beauport,
Quebec with his wife and daughter.

Paul’s website: www.safeship.ca
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If we only had one technology related wish for 2008 it would be that every mariner watched this video. Reminder: This is important people!

FROM WIRED:

While micro-messaging service Twitter may be one of the best tools for citizen reporting in emergencies such as the Southern California wildfires, the service’s real usefulness is its ability to get messages to users’ friends and family and provide evacuation updates — even when cell networks are overloaded, according to homeland security consultant W. David Stephenson.

As important as the updates you wrote about, they’re nowhere near as important as using Twitter to let your family know you’re ok (instead of cell calls, which every time they’re used in disasters end up crashing the network — and don’t get through, either): because they’re packet based, they’re cued up until they can route around obstacles or gaps in the network, and the 140-character limit means they take up a tiny amount of bandwidth, leaving it for those who need it most.

Even cooler, Stephenson tells THREAT LEVEL, are the Red Cross’s Twitter channels.

* The redcross channel lets them push information during a mass evacuation. Since cellphone customers can sign up for Twitter ‘on the fly,’ they will encourage evacuees to text ‘FOLLOW REDCROSS’ to 40404, and sign up for updates. The messages will include information about where the shelters are, distribution sites, and other contact info.

* The safeandwell channel is used more for inbound communication. Those who text ‘FOLLOW SAFEANDWELL’ to 40404 will automatically be followed back. That means they can send their private information as a Direct Message to the American Red Cross. (’D SAFEANDWELL Larry Melman, 205-xxx-xxxx, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Bay Minette, is safe in a shelter.’) That maintains the privacy of the individual, and also serves to funnel the information to a centralized database.

Stephenson shows how to use Twitter in emergencies in this episode of his video series 21st Century Disaster Tips You Won’t Hear From Officials:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to Jesse Robbins for the find.

gCaptain’s Twitter Page

Wired has an interesting article on portable emergency housing. Some of the ideas make use of shipping containers. The tell us;

One of the biggest obstacles to emergency-shelter design is finding the right balance between providing a temporary shelter like a tent and working to rebuild permanent homes.

“You can’t design for disaster after the fact,” notes Kate Stohr, co-founder of the nonprofit humanitarian design firm Architecture for Humanity. “Unless it’s strategically thought about in advance of disaster, these ideas don’t work.”Shipping containers, found in abundance all over the world, form the basis for the Future Shack, a self-contained, modular refugee-housing unit. It can be mass-produced with a minimum of materials and is easily stockpiled, making it a versatile emergency-housing unit.

You can find the slideshow and attached article HERE.