Emergency procedures Collision, Grounding, Water Holes and Emergency Damage Control Equipments

Nowadays technical innovations like GPS, TSS, ECDIS, AIS have minimized the risks of collisions, but sea routes are getting busier day by day as the number of sailing ships is continuously increasing. Technology advancement has helped large ships to sail at amazing speeds. But with an increase in traffic and speed, the risk of accidents and the effects of collision has also increased drastically.

In both collision and grounding cases, water holes can occur, that is why one of the rolls that we find on ships is the water hole roll. It is the G letter in Morse code and will be repeated 6 times.

What are the causes for grounding?

Bad weather Negligence of officers . Like : wrong navigation, disregarding the COLREG rules Ignoring the amendment of maps from notice to mariners

In groundings, damages of ship, systems and cargo, as well as crew injuries can occur.

In case of grounding:

immediately stop the engine , turn on alarm and exhibit the lights for ship length and, in addition, two all round red lights in vertical line and three balls in a vertical line in daylight, check the water depth and the nature of the bottom of sea , close all watertight doors, read the drafts and secure ship stability even by flooding some compartments.

Maritime Ship Collisions

Ship collision is a kind of marine accident that results from a ship crashing into a still or floating object. Ship collision cases can be a ship to ship, ship to floating object, ship to submarine or ship to still structure collisions.

Effects of Ship Collision

The after effects of a ship collision on marine and human life are immeasurable . The ship involved in a collision suffers from heavy structural and stability damage. Apart from the damage to the ship, collision results in the following effects:

Collision leads to detrimental environmental effects. If the ship involved in a collision is a tanker or a chemical vessel then there are high chances of the chemical or oil leaking to the sea. Financial loss to both, the ship owner and the nearby local communities is huge. Ship collision renders substantial threat to human life. There has been accidents in past when the ship has sanked within minutes, giving no chance to the people on board to escape. Collision with an offshore structure or a port leads to infrastructure damage and thus cause a heavy blow to human efforts. There has been collisions with bridges and port structures in the past, resulting in heavy financial and efforts loss.

What causes collision?

As a result of human error, weather conditions, failure of ships steering gear , failure of the pipes which communicate with sea, explosions inside or outside the ship.

In most cases collision produces changes in shape of the ship and if there are water holes they have an immediate result in changes of stability and floatability of ship.

What measures do we take?

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observe if the risk of explosion or fire exists. cease any maneuver with own ship send distress messages suitable for the given situation check and close any watertight openings visually check the hull inspect all the cargo stores establish communication means with the collided ship

In both cases water holes can occur . Classification of water holes:

By size: small, middle, big and very big By position regarding the water line: above / below the water line By appearance: smooth or rough

First action after such accident is to find the water hole, its characteristics and after that we seal the damaged compartment. Small water holes can be plugged with: hook bolts metalic patch rubber seal with pine wooden caps. Middle water holes can be plugged with: rubber patches soft edge panels. Big and very big water holes we use a emergency covering canvas from outside because the water pressure is to big to act from inside.

Ship CORONIS,
call sign C6VC9, bulk carrier of 40485 GT lenth over all of 225 meters. On 26 February at 00:01hours CORONIS grounded in the southern part of the Sound, at the northern entrance to the Drogden Channel, in position 5538.03 N -1241.36 E.

On approaching the entrance 3 northbound vessels were approaching CORONIS from the south. In order to give room for a port to port passage between CORONIS and the 3 vessels, the Captain decided to pass the white light middlebuoy on CORONISs port side, between the middle-buoy and the green light buoy No 2. The last of the 3 vessels was passed port to port, when CORONIS was between the entrance buoys. The white light buoy was close on CORONISs port side and the speed was unaltered, about 13knots. After the white light middle-buoy the Captain ordered the helmsman to alter course to port, but it was too late to avoid the grounding, which took place at 00:01 hours.

Conclusions:

Grounding occurred due to inadequate speed in shallow water, commander had no experience in that area and yet he refused to take the pilot on board .