Tackling emergency preparedness

The objective of the HAVEP, carried out from 1 January to 31 December 2013, was to obtain a view of emergency preparedness on passenger ships following the Costa Concordia incident in January 2012. The flags with HAVEP-topic related detentions were from the Bahamas and Malta.

“The results of the HAVEP indicate that masters and operators must pay attention to carrying out regular realistic fire and abandon ship drills, said Patrick Dolby, head of the Inspection Operations Branch of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCGA) and leader of the Paris MoU Task Force.

Whilst the results of the HAVEP indicate reasonable overall compliance with SOLAS requirements for passenger ships, both from an operational point of view and hardware, in 19 out of 232 inspections (8.19%) a deficiency was recorded against a fire drill and in 20 inspections (8.62%) a deficiency was recorded against an abandon ship drill.

Analysis of the recorded deficiencies shows that most deficiencies relate to abandon ship drills (8.62%), conducting fire drills (8.19%), closing devices/watertight doors (7.76%) and SAR co-operation plan for passenger ships (7.76%). Other deficiencies relate to the fire control plan (5.17%), evaluation of crew performance (training fire drills) (4.74%) and the muster list (4.31%).

The HAVEP questionnaire was completed during 232 inspections on 225 individual ships. Aside from the two ships that were detained, a total of 130 HAVEP-related deficiencies were recorded.

Detailed results of the campaign will be presented to the 47th meeting of the Port State Control Committee in May 2014, after which the report will be submitted to the International Maritime Organization.