Since we are revisiting this accident I attach a link to a report I wrote on the Italian report of the disaster. It still extends to 4000 words, but for those visiting the info for the first time it would save you a lot of reading. http://www.shipsandoil.co.uk/accident-reports-introduction/the-costa-concordia-accident .
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Why is it wrong, why captain cannot be SSO?
Wow, donât go that way. Have you already forgotten El Faro and TOTE Services Inc.?
yabutt, yabutt ⌠did he ever ââhonk the hornââ to impress the âland lubbersâ??
Thanks, much easier to read.
Seems like a bit of a top heavy list? Lots of officers and no less than 3 UL master licences but only 3 bosuns,1 AB and 1 OS on deck. Surely there were more deck guys on board, mooring arrangements look pretty complicated and would require at 4 deck hands per mooring station right?
Is this the minimum manning with a full load of passengers on board? The ship I work on has two minimum manning lists, as we can carry 30ish âspecial purpose personnelâ, if they are on board we require almost 50% more marine crew than when just transiting without project guys on board.
I hadnât heard about the Italian authorities going after the helmsman, if that is indeed the case (as shown in this video) it certainly proves that they are just looking for a scapegoat. Maybe he was incompetent, but then that is still not his fault but the mistake of whoever promoted him to this role.
And indeed helmsmen make mistakes under pressure, even ones that might normally be reliable. Was a recent NTSB report of a bunker in Houston that hit a barge where the helmsman fucked up twice and the blame went to the OOW and the pilot for not checking.
I think Normal Accidents should be required reading for everyone with an interest in accident investigation, though itâs getting a bit old. But if you like Reasonâs ideas about accident investigation have a look at Sydney Dekkerâs Field guide to understanding âHuman Errorâ, the central point of the book is that a mistake by the operator at the pointy end (whether that be a pilot, OOW, power plant operator) can never be the root cause of an accident.
It certainly gave me some new ways to push back to HSE types who spruke the â80% of accidents is human errorâ fallacy. (Of course in the end everything is human error on some level but thatâs not whatâs usually meant, itâs just easy to blame the guy at the bottom of the smoking hole in the ground since he canât talk back)
A bit off topic here but he also has a fair bit of criticism on Heinrichâs accident triangle, with its corresponding focus on preventing small accidents and near misses to prevent the big one. This is something that really resonated with me as Iâve been long critical of the idea that you can prevent major accidents as long as you put in enough stop cards pointing out the lack of yellow/black stripes on a staircase. We put way too much focus on the common small stuff (e.g. missing colour coding on the knives in the galley, minor spills) to the exclusion of the very rare big ones (e.g. Deepwater horizon).
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Computing the cost/benefit of preventing high probability events is easy. For low probability/ high consequence risk it is essentially impossible. This leaves the optimum expense for disaster prevention up to societal norms and guesswork.
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Even with the low impact stuff the calculations are very big on guess work. Or to say it differently you start with the required outcome and work your way back from there.
Problem with the low prob/high impact ones is that you can warn about stuff for years, end up being branded a whinge and just luck out and never have it ever go wrong - âsee it was all safe!â. Lack of an incident â being safe
I worked in a pretty specific sector in the offshore industry when a competing vessel was lost, luckily with limited loss of life though some people did die, and it was only pure luck that they didnât go with all hands. The photos went round the ships and offices - made us all have a good deep think about everything - because yes it was only luck it didnât happen to us.
The Manning List is from the official report of the Italian Marine Casualties Investigative Body.
Only recently, I had seen that therein was an error: The individual numbers do not sum up to the given total number of 75, there are only 42 individuals listed. Maybe the âtop heavyâ comes from this discrepancy.
I can only speculate:
On all cruise ships recently locked down at anchor or in port for Corona reasons, I read of more than 100 crew on board.
The 75 crew may be for a completely locked down hotel part, without electricity, water, wifi, air conditioning etc. After a few weeks, such a ship would be ready for a profound overhaulâŚ
Only a daily 5-minutes examination of 1500 cabins would take some 125 man-hours. A not functioning light or toilet would not be a problem, but it could be the sign of a real problem behind.
On my passenger ships the mustering/abandon ship system of passengers was very simple. At boarding the cabin stewards helped the passengers with the luggage in the cabins and informed them about the next morning mustering/abandon ship exercise, i.e. to go from the cabin to the muster station with life west to be escorted to the lifeboats. The stewards would ensure nobody was left behind. When all pax were at the muster stations (nobody was sleeping in a cabin) they all proceeded to the lifeboats. As I understand it Costa Concordia had only one muster station for all passengers with no cabin stewards checking anything, and when the abandon ship alarm was raised, all staff aboard rushed to the lifeboats ahead of the passengers, that didnât have a clue what was going on. It was all the fault of Mr. Schettino, the Master.