COAST GUARD MARINE INSPECTORS: IN FROM THE START BY CRAIG COLLINS
It happened, coincidentally, during the longest government shutdown in history, from December 2018 to January 2019, when the nation’s essential employees were either furloughed or working without pay. Three of those employees – chief warrant officers Dan Reed, Chris Keister, and Derek Shay, marine inspectors with Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles/Long Beach – were at work at the sprawling port complex at San Pedro Bay, conducting a routine inspection of a container ship whose operator had alerted them to several fractures in its structure. The inspectors found more than a few fractures – about 40 cracks in all, throughout the ship’s structure, that had to be repaired. “Our job,” said Reed, a senior marine inspector, “is to ensure that it is compliant with U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations regarding all aspects of safety, construction, and security.” Repairs to the container ship – under the supervision of Coast Guard marine inspectors – were conducted over a period of two weeks. Verifying a vessel’s compliance with laws and regulations is complicated. According to Reed, he and other marine inspectors are often referred to as “bag carriers,” because of the satchels they lug around containing volumes of applicable references – regulations, codes, and specifications – as well as inspection and safety equipment. “We inspect everything from the chemical composition of the steel to the procedures of the welding repairs to the qualifications of the welders themselves – a cradle-to-grave evaluation of the vessel,” Reed said. Usually, such detailed analysis of structural steel, including its composition and strength, is conducted by a class surveyor, certified to oversee the work of steel mills.
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Coast Guard OUTLOOK
When Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz delivered his annual State of the Coast Guard address at Coast Guard Base Los Angeles/Long Beach on March 21, 2019, he called out Reed, Keister, and Shay by name: The container ship they’d inspected was holding nearly a million gallons of bunker oil, he said, which, given the fractures they discovered, posed a threat to the vessel’s integrity and the environment. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, operating side by side in San Pedro Bay, are the two busiest container ports in the United States and form the eighth-largest port complex in the world. Last year, more than 17 million
