Even if lacking in maritime knowledge, most passengers are excellent observers of crew behavior and interaction. If they perceive the crew working well together during routine tasks, they will be more likely to trust their ability to successfully help them in a crisis. On the other hand, if they deem the crew clumsy, incompetent or uncaring in their everyday activities, they are not likely to suddenly put faith in them when the world around them is falling to pieces.
In such a case, passengers may determine their best chance of survival is to fend for themselves, ignoring officer and crew instructions. This is what happened with the Costa Concordia when even though the ship had lost power and was obviously sinking, bridge announcements and crew members kept insisting that passengers stay in their rooms. They refused. Chaos ensued.
Passengers’ will to survive may be strong, but the odds of their survival are directly related to the useful survival skills they bring to the table – which in the case of untrained non-mariners is virtually zero.
To be of value in an emergency, crew members must know how to manage passengers and instill confidence. They must learn and practice how to rapidly convert from “passenger service” mode to “passenger safety” mode. What’s the difference?
When providing passenger service, such as serving a steak or cleaning a room, “the customer is always right.” Even when they’re not. In passenger safety mode, the tables are turned, and the customer may have to take orders from the service provider. This requires not only that the passenger perceive the crew member as a capable professional trained in emergency procedures but that the crew member have the willingness and self-confidence to stand up assertively to passengers who may challenge their authority.
66 | The Report • June 2019 • Issue 88
Real emergencies are unexpected and scary. They may also be messy and confusing. Things that were never supposed to go wrong just did. Survival depends on decisions that must quickly be made based on very little information about things with which people have no prior experience. Everyone affected will want to survive, but who will lead and who will follow? Or will anybody lead? Or everybody?
TIGHTENING THE RULES
In an age of ever-increasing regulatory requirements, too many owners and operators see the STCW Crowd Management Training requirement the same way passengers see the obligation to participate in emergency drills – an irritating box to be checked with as little inconvenience as possible. With its content suggested but unregulated by most flag states, the sum total Crowd Management training received by most passenger vessel crew members amounts to a brief talk from a junior mate or maybe an hour or two trying to stay awake in front of a computer screen.
Prior to the Costa Concordia disaster, the company checked the Crowd Management training box by subjecting new hands to a 37-minute video. Crew members often receive this training after flying 24 hours or more to join their ship as the law says they must have it before they can go to work.
The odds of recalling any course material a year after reporting on board are usually pretty unlikely. Since there is no refresher training requirement, any knowledge that still remains at that point continues to atrophy until it’s gone.
Because the quality of many Crowd Management training programs is so poor, the IMO has commissioned new model courses in passenger safety procedures. These specify a minimum of eight hours for Crowd Management and sixteen hours for Crisis Management and Human Behavior. They also call for assessments of competence by qualified instructors and crew members. While IMO model courses are only advisory in nature, flag states do have the ability to adopt them as minimum standards for courses approved for use on their countries’ vessels.
Predicting how crewmembers will perform their duties to passengers in an emergency will always be a difficult task. Companies and officers who simply hope for the best may be disappointed. Companies and officers who implement realistic training programs, incorporating objective assessments followed by periodic refresher training, can still only speculate how their crews will actually perform in a real emergency. But their speculations will have the benefit of insight gained from first-hand observation of their crews’ knowledge, training and behavior.
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