- Some six million containers or 10% of the overall capacity moved across the oceans, contain dangerous goods.
- Nearly 1.3 million of those boxes aren’t properly packed or are incorrectly identified.
- There is a fire at sea every 60 days on average, and overall insurance claims in excess of $500 million annually.
- The National Cargo Bureau reports that 4% of 31,000 boxes it checked in 2017 contained dangerous cargo that wasn’t properly secured.
- Companies have started pointing to mislabeled, mishandled dangerous goods as likely source of an unusual spate of fires since last year.
The international shipping industry is wrestling with a spate of fires aboard vessels at sea in recent months, reports the Wall Street Journal.
A Recent Incident
Not only have these fires crippled several big cargo ships, and killed a number of seafarers; they have cost companies and their customers, hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
The latest blaze came on March 10, when a nearly 31,000-ton container caught fire in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of France. This ablaze container and automobile carrier lead to the rescue of 27 crew members by a British Navy frigate. The Grimaldi Lines-operated Grande America sank two days later, taking more than 2,000 cars that included luxury Audi and Porsche models, to the seafloor.
Why is this cause for concern?
The disaster was the fourth big ship fire in the past four months and followed a handful of fires last year. These included one that heavily damaged the mega-ship Maersk Honam, owned by Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S. Five crew members lost their lives under the watch of the world’s largest container ship operator by capacity.
Maersk officials say the string of incidents is likely a coincidence, but it has raised alarms among operators, insurers and shipping customers. It has also focused more attention on the safe handling of the big quantities of goods. These are goods that move on increasingly large and packed oceangoing vessels.
“It was a wake-up call,” Maersk’s head of fleet technology, Ole Graa Jakobsen, said. He spoke of the fire that broke out March 6, 2018, on the Maersk Honam. This is a 353-meter (1,158 foot) ship with capacity for 15,000 containers, in the Arabian Sea.
What actions were taken?
Maersk has since barred the stowage below deck of dangerous goods and other shipments that may be resistant to fire fighting. The cause of the Honam fire, which took five weeks to bring under control, remains under investigation. However, Maersk has said the ship carried shipments classified as dangerous goods. Ship operators, insurers and regulators increasingly are focusing on the chemicals, batteries and other goods that can trigger or feed a fire.
What are the causes?
Although the causes of ship fires are difficult to pinpoint, transport and logistics insurer TT Club estimates the following. Around two-thirds of all incidents are the result of “poor practice in the overall packing process” of dangerous goods, which are often misidentified or undeclared.
The insurer said that there is a fire at sea every 60 days on average, and overall insurance claims in excess of $500 million annually. The group estimates some six million containers or 10% of the overall capacity moved across the oceans, contain dangerous goods. Nearly 1.3 million of those boxes aren’t properly packed or are incorrectly identified.
What is the level of damages?
The potential damage from such incidents has grown as carriers have moved to ever-larger vessels, concentrating more containers on a smaller number of ships. This can raise the chances that dangerous goods are onboard; the rush to handle many thousands of boxes at a port call may raise the chances that poorly packaged dangerous goods can slip through. Mr. Jakobsen said that in some cases undeclared or miss-declared goods cause containers to go ablaze.
“It’s a root cause of some of the fires and we do what we can in terms of checks to make sure that what is declared, is actually what is in the box,” he said. Products like barbecue charcoal can burst into flames when the temperature rises; others like fish food and pool-cleaning agents generate oxygen that can intensify the blaze.
What do the statistics say?
The National Cargo Bureau, a surveying body that assists the U.S. Coast Guard to enforce safe navigation, said that 4% of 31,000 boxes it checked in 2017 contained dangerous cargo that wasn’t properly secured.
Another survey of 1,700 vessel stowing plans said 20% of the plans weren’t in line with existing dangerous-goods rules. “The numbers of containers and stow plans we check are very small. So if you extrapolate them for the whole industry, the problem is immense,” said NCB President Ian Lennard.
Stricter Rules Won’t Help
Some transport officials say shippers who circumvent dangerous-goods rules with false declarations should face criminal penalties. But German container line Hapag-Lloyd AG, which says it gets around 3,000 undeclared or miss-declared bookings a year, believes stricter rules won’t help. “The shipper who deliberately doesn’t declare what is in a container won’t change because of more legal requirements,” said company spokesman Nils Haupt.
What happened on the Grimaldi?
The fire on the Grimaldi Grande America started in a container on the vessel’s deck, according to the company. It spread quickly to vehicles on board, forcing the crew to flee in a single lifeboat.
Smoke on The Waters
It followed a string of fires that began on New Year’s Eve. Back then a blaze engulfed the Japan-registered car carrier Sincerity Ace; it hauled 3,500 vehicles from Yokohama to Hawaii. Five crew members died when a lifeboat launch went awry in heavy weather and they ended up in the water.
On Jan. 3, a fire broke out on containers aboard Hapag-Lloyd’s Yantian Express off Canada’s eastern coast, forcing an evacuation of its 22-member crew. Five days later, the Vietnamese tanker Aulac Fortune was rocked by three explosions off Hong Kong that left one sailor dead.
On Jan. 31, a blaze hit the Singapore-registered APL Vancouver off Vietnam that took several days to bring under control. After which the ship was forced to limp back to Singapore for assessment.
The aftermath of the Honam
Maersk, meantime, is still coping with the aftermath of the Honam fire a year after it happened. Salvage crews sliced off the heavily damaged front portion of the ship; the rest of the vessel was loaded on a special extra-large transporter in Dubai last month and ferried to a shipyard in South Korea. Workers, there will weld a new 228-meter steel section onto the remaining portion from mid-ship to stern.
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Source: Wall Street Journal
