Safety at Sea

At around 23:00 on December 22nd 1963 Captain Mathios Zarbis was watching the passengers enjoying themselves dancing at the Tropical Tramps Ball in the main ballroom of the TSMS Laconia 180 miles north of Maderia.
Unbeknown to Captain Zarbis and all on board, a string of events had started to unfold that by the end of that night would see the total loss of the ship and the lives of 95 passengers and 33 crew members.
Just before 23:00 the steward noticed smoke seeping from underneath the door of the hair salon. Upon opening the door he found the room completely ablaze and attempts to tackle the fire and stop it spreading with fire extinguishers proved futile. The fire alarms were operated, but were not audible enough to be heard. The first indication of the fire to the rest of the ship was smoke pouring into the ballroom.
As passengers from the ballroom attempted to get to the boat deck, those roused from sleep in their cabins were wrongly directed straight into the path of the fire. Between 23:30, when the first distress call was made, and the last signal indicating the abandoned ship only 52 minutes lapsed. Despite individual acts of great bravery, such as the swimming pool attendant and a steward being lowered down the slide of the ship with ropes tied around their ankles to snatch trapped children from cabin portholes, the crew failed to bring the fire under control or even stop it rapidly spreading to other decks.
Only half the lifeboats made it away safely; some burned, and two spilled the occupants into the sea. Over 100 people were trapped on board in the glass-enclosed Agora Shopping Centre until eventually the flames closed in on them, when they lowered the gangways and quietly walked single file into the sea.
Between 03:30 and dawn, the rescue of the passengers was carried out by the ships Salta Mont Calm, Charlesville, Rio Grande, Stratheden, Mehdi and four United States Air Force G54 aircraft that dropped life rafts and survival kits. Despite the intervention of so many ships, many people died in the sea that night.
Learning the Lessons
This and many other devastating fires on vessels and a rising death toll on passenger liners throughout the world led to calls for increased safety at sea legislation. The IMO, formerly the IMCO founded in 1948, had only just adopted a new convention for the safety of life at sea, SOLAS, in 1960, but the loss of vessels was still increasing. It took years of legislation before a major revision of the STCW 1978 came into force. This was further amended by the STCW 1995 Convention.
The content of the Fire and Safety at Sea Legislation Regulations of the STCW Codes are the main focus in the day-to-day work carried out at the Maritime School in Plymouth in the UK. The school has been in existence for over thirty years and comes under the remit of the Training Academy Division of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service. The Maritime School’s STCW curriculum has recently been re-accredited by the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency after changes had been made to the course contents. While still adhering to the STCW regulations, we have introduced new firefighting, ventilation and command and control techniques employed by international fire and rescue services. These procedures include basic fire behaviour skills, such as recognition of potential flashover and backdraft situations, and the ability to control the environment with advanced branch techniques and basic tactical ventilation.
The School’s facilities, in addition to lecture rooms and breathing apparatus training facilities, include a demonstration room to enable students to witness the live actuation of sprinklers, inert gas flooding, foam and high pressure fog extinguishing systems. There is also new specialist rescue and confined space towers for the use of students on other academy courses provided by the Access and Rescue School, or to allow students on maritime courses to practice ship-to-ship access.
The ship firefighting structure is a steel, multi-compartment structure including machinery spaces with fixed equipment and varied-level gantries with multiple access points. The main success of the School comes from its ability to conduct carbonaceous burns, not gas. This provides students with a greatly enhanced level of realism during firefighting and the ability to control the conditions themselves using fire behaviour techniques and ventilation.
The Maritime School offers a full spectrum of courses starting with a one day marina firefighting course aimed at people who have responsibility for the running and security of boat marinas.
The one day boat master’s course is aimed at day boats, fishing boats and private boat owners. The day is divided into a morning’s theory input of fire safety and fire prevention and an afternoon’s basic firefighting with extinguishers and small hose reels.
STCW 95 Courses
The full STCW 95 basic course is offered starting with a one day personal survival techniques, run in partnership with Maritime Survival Solutions. The second day is the basic first aid, which can be delivered in its basic form or tailored for the security industry to incorporate more trauma-related emergency medicine, such as the use of advanced airway management, tourniquets, haemostatic agents, and casualty transfers.
The Personal Safety and Social Responsibility element of the course is offered in the evenings, leaving the last three days (or two extended days) for the basic firefighting.
Day one is basic theory input followed by practical extinguisher firefighting. The last part of the day covers hose, ladder, door and hatch entry techniques. Day two starts with the theory of breathing apparatus and breathing apparatus physiology. The first breathing apparatus exercise is a simple route finding exercise in darkness followed by a breathing apparatus exercise within the ship structure in cold smoke and darkness. The final exercise of the day is a breathing apparatus exercise in heat levels with live fires. The students practice hose and branch techniques, door and hatch entry while working in teams in realistic fire conditions.
The last day covers firefighting tactics and fire party operations and also has a basic input into fixed firefighting installations. At this point in the course the students then witness a live fire demonstration, a fixed installation such as sprinklers, foam, inert gas and Hi-fog systems.
For the final afternoon’s exercise, students are divided into fire parties and a scenario developed for a serious multi-seated fire aboard with a number of casualties reported missing. While the students are encouraged to make their own firefighting decisions during the exercise, the general instructions and guidance are delivered by the staff instructors. Each firefighting team is accompanied by a safety officer at all times. The staff member is primarily there as an observer and will only influence the firefighting teams if they put themselves at risk. Safety officers are in constant communication with an outside control room via radio and use thermal imaging cameras with transmitters to record students’ actions.
The final exercise is followed by a long and detailed de-brief using plans, thermal image film and safety officer’s observations to reinforce the course teaching outcomes.
STCW 95 Advanced Firefighting
The advanced course refreshes the techniques learned on the basic course and a similar exercise to the basic final exercise is run for students on day two to give both the students and the staff an understanding of the knowledge level of students so that the staff are better able to tailor the learning outcomes.
The remainder of the course concentrates on tactics carried out in the live fire environment and in small groups using ship plans with students pitting their wits against the staff instructors who set and direct the scenarios.
Students on the advanced course also receive further instructions on board advanced fixed installations such as HiEx foam, forced ventilation fans, water removal and stability. Half a day is given over to table-top command and control exercises to further enhance the capability of ships’ officers to command a rapidly escalating fire situation. The aim being to control the situation with minimum risk to the crew and reducing loss to ship owners and insurers. Time is also given to understanding the regulations and legislation as they apply in the maritime world.
The Piracy Fire Threat
Recent changes in the global maritime world have highlighted the dangers of piracy. Soldiers and marines are leaving the military service to join one of the many maritime security companies and embarking on a new career to protect the world’s shipping from pirates. There is an obvious increase in the risk from fire aboard resulting from pirate attacks and a need for the security staff to be fully trained in firefighting techniques and in many cases take a lead role in firefighting operations on board. Indeed international maritime organisations are bringing regulation into force to make STCW 95 basic firefighting training, inter alia, compulsory and both companies and individuals will find the qualification a pre requisite for employment in the security industry.
The Future
We can only speculate on the outcome of the Laconia fire if it had happened today and she had been fitted with a modern automatic fire detection system and if the fire awareness among the crew had resulted in the steward who discovered the fire keeping the compartment door shut until a fully equipped firefighting team using CABA sets, fire behaviour branch techniques, thermal imaging cameras and radios to assist in command and control and a high degree of training took over. Perhaps the implication of a fire safety culture on board may have meant that the fire may never have started.
Throughout the course of working at the Maritime School, staff have made many observations. The most common observation is the absence of an STCW 95 refresher requalification. There are not many industries where a single training course is deemed sufficient for a lifetime, particularly when such obvious changes in techniques, vessels, and risks have come about over the years. How many officers and crews of ships can remember back to their initial firefighting course and feel they can confidently tackle a fire on board? It is the intention of the Plymouth Maritime School to take this issue forward for debate. In the short term, the School will be designing a one-day STCW95 refresher/re-qualifier, where students can practice the ship’s firefighting procedures together in a live fire environment and benefit from the input of professional fire service advice.
Even as I was writing this article, news arrived about a fire on board the Norwegian cruise ship, Nordyls, sailing from Bergen to the Arctic Circle. When a fire and explosion on board killed two of the crew and injured nine. Over 260 passengers were evacuated from the vessel and the possibility of her sinking was only avoided after she was towed into harbour. This difficult fire was tackled by over 50 crew members and professional firefighters from Norway. If this can happen on a vessel with some of the best trained crews in the world, in a country with some of the strictest safety regulations, than we can only speculate on the risks some of the world’s shipping is facing.
One thing is certain knowledge, training, equipment and practice can go a long way towards the protection of lives from fire at sea.

Tim Mockridge is joint-manager of the Devon & Somerset Fire and Rescue Service Maritime School
For further information, go to www.dsfire.gov.uk