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MCA needed to inspect and weigh the discharged containers on a piece of land formerly used as a football ground but swiftly concreted over for container reception, before onward transport to their destination or for disposal if they were considered beyond saving.


Another finding, well known to the industry, was the significant amount of overweight triaged containers compared to the manifest.


The sheer volume of discharged containers brought ashore by barge caused serious difficulties at the nearby port of Portland. Unknown to the media at the time, we were within 15 containers of closing the port.


This was from a box ship carrying 2,323 containers. For argument’s sake, what would you do with the other 18,000 containers today if your mega box ship ends up in the same condition?


Few ports have the emergency facilities and space required to land, assess and turn around thousands of containers from a casualty. In future cases involving a mega box ship, this will be a major critical factor and one which will undoubtedly draw the eye of the media.


POLLUTION ASPECTS


Environmental concerns will take a huge amount of time and effort, and in the MSC Napoli’s case, we also had to deal with concerns that were being expressed about the 900 guillemots and 200 gulls which had been found suffering from the effects of oil. Some had been found up to 25 miles away, and we needed to explain our co-ordination efforts with the environmental agencies to recover and clean any affected birds. The


cleaning and care of affected wildlife was slow and expensive. It was probably money well spent for reputational purposes, but I wonder how many birds were saved?


Interest from the mainstream media gradually lessened, and we endeavoured to turn the whole episode into a routine work site. But, nevertheless, the story remained somewhere in the news for over a year.


MANAGING THE MEDIA


Our media priorities at that time would be the same for such a large casualty today:


- turn the news into a routine story


- identify the shipowner’s key partners/stakeholders


- respond to concerns relating to protection of the environment


- maintain a core script and a definitive Q&A


- identify key spokesmen - establish hotline telephone numbers.


CONCLUSION


The MSC Napoli had everything the media wanted. No one was hurt or worse throughout the incident; striking pictures; human stories; people grabbing anything they could pick up and carry away in the cold and wet of an English beach; stormy weather conditions; stunning pictures of a ship in distress. In the event of a mega ship casualty now, the media stories will be about pollution risks, cleanup, the environment and the way we transport the massive amounts of goods we need for our ‘just in time’ economies. – just as they were in 2007.


This article has been initially published in the Standard P&I Club’s Mega Box Ship bulletin and is reproduced here with the author’s kind permission.


84 | The Report • September 2019 • Issue 89


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