It is now a week since passengers made a mad crush to flee the sinking cruise ship ‘Costa Concordia’ of the Tuscan coast of Italy, raising questions about the crew’s preparedness,
Passengers said no crew member was trained for an evacuation as it appeared the crew didn’t really know what to do during the emergency and the confusion may have been caused in part by communication problems.
To know how to survive an emergency, cruise passengers are required by law to attend a safety briefing within 24 hours of embarkation. During a typical muster drill, the ship sounds the signals that would call people to their lifeboat stations so they know what to do if there is something wrong.
Unlike ships cruising in the Caribbean, Costa gets passengers from many countries and thus passengers speak different languages. When carrying out fire safety inspections at hotels in London, I always stress the importance of the many different languages the fire safety emergency plans have to be communicated in. I can only imagine the chaos of trying to communicate to passengers from, maybe, eight different languages how to get off the ship.
The incident also highlights the importance of safety drills and paying attention to them. Crew training in emergency response also is key. A lot of the training is done by the cruise lines themselves based on international maritime standards. As a Fire Officer I study and audit the competency of the responsible person and this is no different to studying the competency of the crew during fire and abandon-ship drills.
The biggest incident I attended as a firefighter was the Ladbrook Grove ( Paddington) Rail incident in October 1999, which was one of the most traumatic days of my career. After a busy night at Euston Fire Station, I had my breakfast interrupted to respond to a routine call about a garage fire.
On route to the incident with my Blue Watch crew in the fire appliance, the severity of the situation hit home. Flames were punching up a good 50 feet, there was a massive pall of smoke and upon arrival there was fire all over the crash site where diesel had spilled.
To get to the site, we used ladders to scale 12-foot security fencing before opening a gate to allow the fire appliances through.
I can recall the struggle to retain emotional detachment in the face of 300 or so passengers – many injured with broken limbs, severe burns or metal embedded in their bodies.
We didn’t know how many people were in carriage H but it was burning ferociously. You couldn’t get within 30 feet of it. We knew the chances of anyone coming out alive were fairly slim.
We were ordered to redirect the fire hoses from the express train towards one of the Thames Trains coaches, where six people were trapped.
The fire was extinguished and together with my crew, spent four long hours working with paramedics to cut free the casualties. Four survived.
After seven hours, we left the scene and were back at work at 6pm.
I believe getting on with the job was the best thing and I was especially touched, moved and inspired by the humanity showed by passengers to one another. Complete strangers were helping each other off the train, trying to give first aid.
Earlier this week, two experts in emergency behavior were talking about research into what people actually do in emergencies, and the psychological processes involved. It only lasts seven minutes so if you want to know what goes through peoples mind in an emergency I would highly recommend a listen here;
Costa Concordia: No crew member was trained for an evacuation
Ladbrook Grove Rail Crash: I worked for hours with my crew on rescue operations
