Containing container fires

ALL AT SEA

CONTAINER FIRES • EVERY TWO WEEKS, A FIRE BREAKS OUT ON A CONTAINERSHIP BUT ONLY A HANDFUL MAKE THE NEWS. WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THOSE STATISTICS?

THE SCOURGE OF fires aboard containerships is proving very difficult to address. It is widely said that a fire breaks out roughly every two weeks – and yet the number of high-profile incidents such as the fires aboard MSC Flaminia or Maersk Honam are, by comparison, fairly rare. So if there are, say 25 containership fires every year, why do only a handful make the news?

This was one issue addressed during a webinar hosted by TT Club and the UK P&I Club in February, during which some 200 interested viewers spent a little more than an hour with two experts in the field: John Gow, senior investigator with IFIC Forensics and a 40-year veteran as a professional firefighter and incident commander; and Nick Haslam, principal master mariner and partner at Brookes Bell.

The potential impact of a uncontrollable fire aboard a ship at sea is immense: there is the risk of loss of life and of damage to property and the environment, which can come at a massive cost to the maritime industry and its insurance underwriters. Gow mentioned that the total loss involved in the MSC Flaminia case came to some $260m and, as containerships continue to get bigger, the industry is facing potential losses of up to $1bn.

Furthermore, as has been noted repeatedly, many of these fires are known or suspected to have been caused by dangerous goods, often mis- or undeclared or hidden by the use of special provisions. This creates problems for firefighters: how can they attack a fire if they do not know what is burning?

LIFE AT SEA Gow used his extensive experience as a firefighter to contrast the practicalities of fighting a fire at sea compared to on land. After all, on an ultra-large containership, the container stack can be 70 metres or more high, equivalent to a high-rise building ashore.

Considering firefighting on land, Gow mentioned that personal protective equipment (PPE) has improved immensely in recent years, especially in terms of lightweight breathing apparatus (BA). In addition, buildings are generally designed so as to contain any fire that does break out and are often fitted with sprinklers. Firefighters attending such a blaze normally find that access is comparatively easy and they are also likely to get an early indication of the fire. If additional resources are needed, they can come quickly – within minutes in an urban environment.

At sea, however, PPE is not so good. Gow said that BA is normally limited to about 30 minutes but this is optimistic given the time it takes to get to the fire and get out safely. The arrangement of containers on a ship is both a help – cargo compartments can contain a fire – but also a potential hindrance, when the containers are packed tightly on deck, making it difficult for responders to move freely and to get equipment to the right place. For underdeck fires, getting personnel into the area to fight the fire means an enclosed space entry, which is not recommended. Furthermore, the speed of response is much slower than on land – it may take some time for the fire to be noticed and located, and then crew have to get the right equipment to the right place.

Accommodation units and wheelhouses are usually fairly well protected but can, Gow said, be hard to access, with narrow

corridors and steep stairs. Furthermore, depending on where the fire breaks out, it may be difficult or even impossible to access the firefighting equipment.

The other main difference is that, aboard ship, the firefighters – at least initially – will be the crew themselves, who receive limited training compared to professional firefighters ashore. And outside help may be hours or even days away.

GET TO THE SOURCE The fundamental policy in fighting a fire is, Gow said, to “get up close and personal”. For a deck fire, that is not easy. Not only does the fire have to be identified, especially if smoke is blowing away from the ship, but the crew have to get to the seat of the fire with the necessary equipment, which is often bulky and heavy.

Cargo holds are generally fitted with an aspirating smoke detector but these have not changed in decades and can be slow to respond. Under deck, ventilation plays a significant role. Closing vents and hatches is a good way to prevent the fire from spreading and, in conjunction with CO², can reduce the amount of oxygen available to feed the fire. But too often those vents and hatches need to be closed manually; mechanical means to do so are vital if a rapid response is to be achieved. This is not a new issue: it was shown by research 75 years ago!

Gow mentioned the use of high-expansion foam as an alternative to CO², which has been shown to be effective but does raise problems with disposal. He also noted that a container in good condition can contain a fire, unless it is extremely aggressive or involves oxidising substances; once the oxygen is depleted, the fire may just smoulder. A damaged container, though, may well let more air in, allowing the fire to build.

Gow looked at some emerging risks, in particular the new propulsion systems being trialled, involving such fuels as electricity, hydrogen, ammonia and so on. These pose different hazards, meaning different training will be required. Is the legislative framework keeping pace with developments? If not, as seems likely, vessel operators will need to take the lead.

VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Gow had brought along his experience as a firefighter but Nick Haslam, having spent 21 years of his career at sea, had a slightly different perspective. He agreed with Gow that the fire training of seafarers is insufficient and said that the relevant parts of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) was in need of review, along with the fire safety and fire suppression requirements found in the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (Solas). It is becoming increasingly clear, he said, that STCW and Solas have not kept pace with developments in containership size and design.

For example, a big containership might have around 20,000 tonnes of dangerous goods on board, stowed in containers all over the ship. Despite that, the crew are only required to have the basic fire training specified in STCW, which amounts to about 2.5 days and does not include live exercises or much in the way of refresher training. By contrast, the crew on a 20,000-dwt chemical tanker would get much more, and more specific training.

For seafarers, big fires are way outside of their training envelope, Haslam said, agreeing with Gow that more – and more specific – training is sorely needed. While there is plenty of water around a ship, it might not be the best medium for extinguishing a chemical fire, but to know that takes knowledge. Meanwhile, Solar

JOHN GOW (RIGHT) NOTED THE MAJOR DIFFERENCE

IN TRAINING REQUIREMENTS FOR SEAFARERS

COMPARED TO SHORE-BASED FIREFIGHTERS AND

THE INHERENT DIFFICULTIES IN FIGHTING A FIRE

specifies a lot of water – not only might this be dangerous but it can also make a distressed vessel unstable and threaten its mechanical integrity, while also posing post-incident disposal problems.

Haslam also noted that, while the focus is on the flammable substances and other chemicals that can cause fires, there is an enormous amount of other combustible material among the average containership’s cargo, some of which will generate toxic smoke when it burns.

WHERE ARE WE GOING? The webinar, moderated by Mike Yarwood, managing director of loss prevention at TT Club, ended with questions from the audience, some of them lodged prior to the session. By and large, these focused on how specifically the provisions can be improved. Should Solas, for instance, mandate fixed water monitors, rather than the mobile units or hoses widely used? Should STCW mandate additional training, including training on working at height and dealing with chemical fires, for seafarers on containerships?

Haslam, clearly keen to see some action to protect seafarers and the environment, said that anything would be an improvement on the current position, though he stressed that flexible and portable equipment, such as firefighting hoses, would always be needed. But why is the maritime industry unable to follow up on technical advances in shore-based firefighting?

Haslam did, though, give some interesting examples of how some of the more responsible container line operators are equipping their vessels to provide better protection, such as adding more fixed water monitors, more CO² injection points, better cargo containment, and so on. Indeed, he showed an impressive image of one of MSC’s new containerships, which is fitted with water monitors on top of both the accommodation block and the engine block – these being separated by some distance in modern configurations; the two sets of monitors can reach the entire length of the ship, without some poor crewman having to lug heavy equipment up and down gantries.

That does not get the crewman “up close and personal” as Gow advised but certainly offers one way of providing rapid response in the event of a fire. Haslam stressed that the two most important elements when dealing with an onboard fire are early detection and early deployment. Better detection systems, particularly for on-deck cargoes, and faster means of addressing any fire are crucial if crews onboard are going to have a chance of dealing with an outbreak.

But both Gow and Haslam stressed that there are plenty of examples of onboard fires being successfully dealt with by the equipment available; ideally, the lessons drawn from those response efforts should be disseminated more widely, perhaps via the Cargo Incident Notification System (CINS), so that other vessel operators can improve their own fire response efforts. Industry can learn from its successes, not just from its failures.

The TT Club/UK P&I Club webinar, Containership fires: what the ship can do, was the second in a series of three events on the topic; the third and final webinar, scheduled to take place on 17 March, will look more closely on what happens after a fire and how the aftermath can best be cleaned up. More information on this and other related events can be found on the TT Club website at www.ttclub. com/news-and-resources/events/.