[QUOTE=+A465B;179686]Does anybody know when transcripts will be out? I’d like to read them, or see end to end video…[/QUOTE]
Transcripts take time to prepare…I wouldn’t expect them for awhile. I’d like to see those boiler inspection reports with photos myself
I think for DWH hearings the transcripts were available same day or the next, out of USCG hearings.
Wondering why we aren’t seeing them here… Just wondering, not criticizing
[QUOTE=+A465B;179686]Does anybody know when transcripts will be out? I’d like to read them, or see end to end video…[/QUOTE]
You can watch the videos day by day here…
http://livestream.com/ElFaro
And for anyone blaming the skipper for maintenance, they better be doing some real double extra fancy good 'splainin about how the [U]company[/U] deals with ISM Code 10.1 & 10.2 … Just thinkin if you talk the talk, bettah walk the walk…
[QUOTE=RespectMyAuthority;179691]You can watch the videos day by day here…
http://livestream.com/ElFaro[/QUOTE]
Thank you. Much appreciated.
Regarding your editorial on the age of the captain on the El Faro I believe experience may or may not have been a factor. I’d be curious to hear what work the outside contractors were performing in the engineroom when propulsion was lost. Perhaps having these personnel working during what turned out to be a critical time during the ship’s passage wasn’t the best decision? I imagine the loss of watertight integrity via watertight doors on the hangar deck may also be discovered as a contributing cause to the ship’s loss.
Just listened to audio of captain speaking to the DPA call center. Wow!
[QUOTE=RespectMyAuthority;179657]I would have been frustrated with the call center too.[/QUOTE]
I know, right? Like “BITCH, PUT ME THROUGH TO A QI NOW!!!”
Why did he have to go through a call center in the first place. Direct contact numbers for the DPA and deputy DPA should be posted near the GMDSS station according to ISM Code, not to mention logic.
[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;179704]I know, right? Like “BITCH, PUT ME THROUGH TO A QI NOW!!!”[/QUOTE]
He was saying that but in more polite words than I would have used. When she asked how to spell the El Faro, I would have lost it and said “PUT ME THROUGH RIGHT F*&KING NOW!” I didn’t get any panic in his voice but more a real sense of urgency. I imagine hearing that recording will be tough on his family.
I don’t understand that either. Currently my company’s QI is the big boss. Every boat in the fleet has his direct number in case SHTF.
Also if SHTF I would not be calling the company’s call center I would be on the horn to the USCG. In a case of life and death the company can kiss my ass, I’ll talk to them when I’m safe again.
I really wish that there would have been a recording of the conversation between the DPA and the Captain. You can not tell me that the DPA did not ask why they had a LOP and what was the cause of the flooding! That guy knows a lot more than he is saying (I am sure that the Company Lawyers have spent a lot of time “helping” him with what he should remember). To me he would have asked if for no other reason than seeing if they were going to need repairs in San Juan.
The other thing that keeps nagging is, why was there an extra CE onboard? They had him listed as Tote CE not as Crew.
Also, I hope that they come out with some sort of a Timeline. What happened when. Did the Flooding cause the LOP Or did the LOP lead to the flooding?
The recording of the DPA talking to the CG sounded more like the ship had some MINOR problems in flat calm seas! How the hell could they be talking about having her anchor when that storm was coming at them???
I really hope and Pray that they find the Recorder and that they can get enough off of it to tell us WTF happened. If what is on that recorder hangs some of the office folk too bad!
To me the board is not only asking B.S. questions, there are not asking the right questions.
Why are they not calling the Family of the Female Second Mate to testify? To me that email that she sent is very important to this time line as it was most likely the last communication from the ship before what ever happened started.
With all of the jumping around with the witness list schedule I hope that they are still going to have the guy from the Polish Riding Crews Company testify. If they do testify maybe just maybe we will find out what they were really doing on board.
I heard that they are calling someone from the CG that rode the El Faro in 2014 (I believe). I wonder what the expect to learn from that?
Sorry for the rambling post. Listening to these hearings for the last couple of days has not given me what I guess we are looking for, the reason for what happened!
We have a really great group of Mariners that post on here regularly. We might fight and bitch at each other which is no different any crew that I have ever sailed with but we all post because we care.
It will never happen but it would be great if we all could meet and raise a Glass to all of those that have sailed only to never return!
I think the first call was from the captain to the DPA and it went to voice mail.
The second call must be to some company number or an answering service and goes nowhere.
The third call is from the CG to the DPA. Best as I can tell the CG has recieved information from the ship that something is amiss but they don’t seem have gotten much info. The CG is seekiing more info from the DPA. During that call the DPA tells the CG that he had gotten a message from the ship, presumably the voice mail of call #1, and had contracted the ship but the SAT phone had cut off before he was able to get more infomation.
It had to have been difucult for the families to hear those calls.
This investigation is another prime example of why the Coast Guard needs to be relieved of the duty of regulating our Merchant Marine. The Coast Guard simply does not have the expertise to regulate an industry as vital as our Merchant Marine.
It’s becoming the “Marine Electric” all over again except sadly, no one survived to speak for the drowned.
On another note, no sea-going vessel or aircraft should completely disappear anymore. The technology to monitor, record data, and send it real-time is well developed. There isn’t a good reason why any vessel or aircraft should vanish without a trace of the cause. The time has come to move into the next generation of safety equipment required to be aboard all Merchant Marine vessels.
The equipment mentioned above and a Merchant Marine regulated by experienced and qualified civilian mariners rather than the USCG would represent a major step forward in Marine Safety.
Just like some maritime companies are comfortable with some maritime unions who offer sweetheart deals, the maritime industry ( read owners) has grown comfortable with the Coast Guard regulators who offer sweetheart regulation.
Some of the questions the USCG asks may seem stupid, like “so you are a captain, describe your typical day”… I think that they might ask those questions that a mariner finds stupid, so that the general population has a better idea of things.
I somewhat agree, they have to ask questions even if the answer is known for the sake of fact finding and putting it in the record. 200 years from now, they will look at stuff like this to see what life was like on a merchant ship. I watched some of the hearings the other day when they were interviewing the captain of El Yunque. Most of the team seems to be good at their job, but that younger USCG Commander seems like he’s never seen a merchant ship. The captain of the El Yunque certainly was not pleased with the way some of his questions were asked. He seemed pretty annoyed about the proceeding. If you guys missed it, you might like to watch the video of it to see the facial expressions.
[QUOTE=Tugs;179716]I really wish that there would have been a recording of the conversation between the DPA and the Captain. You can not tell me that the DPA did not ask why they had a LOP and what was the cause of the flooding! That guy knows a lot more than he is saying (I am sure that the Company Lawyers have spent a lot of time “helping” him with what he should remember). To me he would have asked if for no other reason than seeing if they were going to need repairs in San Juan.
The other thing that keeps nagging is, why was there an extra CE onboard? They had him listed as Tote CE not as Crew.
Also, I hope that they come out with some sort of a Timeline. What happened when. Did the Flooding cause the LOP Or did the LOP lead to the flooding?
The recording of the DPA talking to the CG sounded more like the ship had some MINOR problems in flat calm seas! How the hell could they be talking about having her anchor when that storm was coming at them???
I really hope and Pray that they find the Recorder and that they can get enough off of it to tell us WTF happened. If what is on that recorder hangs some of the office folk too bad!
To me the board is not only asking B.S. questions, there are not asking the right questions.
Why are they not calling the Family of the Female Second Mate to testify? To me that email that she sent is very important to this time line as it was most likely the last communication from the ship before what ever happened started.
With all of the jumping around with the witness list schedule I hope that they are still going to have the guy from the Polish Riding Crews Company testify. If they do testify maybe just maybe we will find out what they were really doing on board.
I heard that they are calling someone from the CG that rode the El Faro in 2014 (I believe). I wonder what the expect to learn from that?
Sorry for the rambling post. Listening to these hearings for the last couple of days has not given me what I guess we are looking for, the reason for what happened!
We have a really great group of Mariners that post on here regularly. We might fight and bitch at each other which is no different any crew that I have ever sailed with but we all post because we care.
It will never happen but it would be great if we all could meet and raise a Glass to all of those that have sailed only to never return![/QUOTE]
It was revealed during the Coast Guard Hearings in Jacksonville on Sat Feb 20[SUP]th[/SUP], that the stability criteria used by the shore side load planner and onboard by the chief mate was to achieve a still water GM Margin of 0.5 feet (6 inches).
This is dangerously misleading.
What should be done is to run a loading and stability program that both predicts and measures the energy transferred into the ship from wind and waves.
This is handled by the Energy Balance feature in the Windows Ship Loading Program made by Ocean Motions in Florida.
It was revealed during the Coast Guard Hearings in Jacksonville on Sat Feb 20[SUP]th[/SUP], that the stability criteria used by the shore side load planner and onboard by the chief mate was to achieve a still water GM Margin of 0.5 feet (6 inches).
This is dangerously misleading.
What should be done is to run a loading and stability program that both predicts and measures the energy transferred into the ship from wind and waves.
This is handled by the Energy Balance feature in the Windows Ship Loading Program made by Ocean Motions in Florida.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;179725]I think the first call was from the captain to the DPA and it went to voice mail.
The second call must be to some company number or an answering service and goes nowhere.
The third call is from the CG to the DPA. Best as I can tell the CG has recieved information from the ship that something is amiss but they don’t seem have gotten much info. The CG is seekiing more info from the DPA. During that call the DPA tells the CG that he had gotten a message from the ship, presumably the voice mail of call #1, and had contracted the ship but the SAT phone had cut off before he was able to get more infomation.
It had to have been difucult for the families to hear those calls.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for that summary, can’t get the feeds.
The nature of that phone call with the call center operator is disturbing on so many levels and is only intensified by the fact that these people lost their lives.
These observations below have nothing to do with the situation they had gotten themselves into and are not offered as any meaningful link in any chain of errors but I can’t help thinking something is wrong in the shoreside management of that organization.
Calling a DPA for an operational emergency? Why? The DPA is a construct of the ISM code. The purpose is to have an independent path to report safety management discrepancies to the highest level of management without having to go through normal chain of command. Shoreside ship management cutting back on PPE or essential outfitting, not authorizing required repairs, failure to provide proper procedures or assistance as documented in the SMS, failure of lower levels of the chain of command to address safety issues raised? Contact the DPA and follow the procedures. These folks would typically be in the HSE or training side of the house precisely so they are out of the normal chain of command and can in theory call the CEO directly.
Maritime emergency? Wouldn’t you be calling the Superintendent, Fleet manager, VP of Operations? I mean his cell phone, at home 24/7 or if being covered that information would be known to all vessels or the phone would pass to the replacement. Most SMS’s have established an emergency response team (ERT) and I don’t see why it would make any sense for a DPA to call that out.
Someone in the operational chain of command should have taken the call, presumably instantly understood the situation and offered reassurance that “as soon as we hang up I am calling the USCG to alert them and call out the internal ERT to get them to working the issues”. Or maybe “don’t worry Mike stay on the phone with me I have someone making calls right now. Lets work the problem, what have you done, what can we do.” It may have been too late, I’m not suggesting it wasn’t. But this crew (any crew) deserved better than dealing with an inane process including having to give phone numbers and spelling the ships name. By the way not slighting the poor operator being stuck in that situation, she must be feeling horrible too. My goodness a simple agreed upon code word /phrase would suffice to let an operator know what is going on with out filling in a script.
Let this be a lesson to those who author and construct SMS’s and ERT procedures. Sounds real good on paper huh? Worked fine in an exercise huh? That procedure is disgraceful.
Two different arguments about what they were doing there and how they got in that trouble. Once in trouble the response should be more effective than that. If I was looking for lessons learned one might be “call early and often” because you might get stuck pressing “1 for English”.
Likewise with the QI reference. This is an OPA 90 construct for an individual authorized to call out the calvary for an oil spill response. Why was he calling them? Was that the only person he could get to answer the phone? I have been away from OPA 90 and US flag for a while now, did they ever pass and implement the OPA 90 of the salvage and fire fighting scheme that was talked about for so long? Is that how a QI might be reasonably called in this situation? To call out towing / salvage assets? I know in some cases the QI could actually work for a third party contracted for by the shipping company. Was that the case here or does Tote designate someone else in the chain of command as a QI?
I know companies are free to build their own SMS’s and create their own org charts but I really don’t get this mixing of terms that up to now seemed so clear to me. Maybe operations people are no longer ex captains and chiefs but MBA’s, HR or finance professionals, lawyers, risk management types or venture capitalists (or their offspring) so they are only too glad to not have to carry an electronic leash and talk to ships crews.
I guess I could have it all wrong (did any of the panel ask them about their org chart and why he was calling a DPA?) but they sure look like they let that guy down notwithstanding any errors on his part.
This really is so sad and gut wrenching.
Yes, the towing/salvage/firefighting thing is in place. How well it works, well in my experience it actually works pretty well as the QI’s have everything in place. No question as who the emergency oil boom vendor is in Marcus Hook at 0300.
In my experience the QI and DPA have regular jobs within the company, but serve as QI/DPA additionally. Theoretically the QI could have been the alt-QI who is the regular DPA; semantics, yes i know. Typically you have alternates too (likely required by ISM anyways?), so you aren’t responsible for the call every day of the year. Once again, in my experience, you’d holler at your dispatcher or equivalent that you have an emergency and either TELL them to get you the QI, or that you’re calling them. Depending on what time of day it is, I’m calling the QI as the master calls the GM, VP, or port captain etc. Honestly If i’m ever in such a situation with that many lives at stake in that fucked up of a situation, the heirarchy can go fuck itself as i’m calling whoever i see fit at the time.
While i despise being spied on, maybe the solution is just a real-time feed. Maybe just send it to an independent storage vendor rather than watch it livetime to preserve some autonomy, but have it available for review whenever needed. Basics would only be needed: Bridge audio, course, speed, position. They’d hate the data pricetag, but in this case why wouldn’t the owners want to know whats up with their boats at any time? Doesn’t BP advertise something like this in their TV ads where they monitor drilling activity?
It seems this whole thing is like a renter calling his landlord to ask permission to call the fire department when his apartment is on fire. TOTE clearly didnt convey the severity of the situation to the CG.