Page 17: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 2020)

“One troubling statistic is that on average there is a ? re onboard a 2 container ship every week , with a major container ? re occurring 3 on average every 60 days .”

Photo: Indian Coast Guard resources of the global salvage industry in dealing with the are calls for more widespread spot checks by IMO member rising numbers of major container ? res. states and shipping lines to help identify undeclared or mis-

As a specialist shipping law ? rm, we are only too aware of declared cargoes.

the increasingly severe consequences of large container ships Leading stakeholders are also working together to develop ? res. Not only have such events resulted in the injury and systems which reduce risk. The Cargo Incident Noti? cation death of many crew members and others over the years, but System (CINS) has over a number of years shared informa- the environmental implications and ? nancial losses continue tion on cargo related incidents and identi? ed commodities 14 to be signi? cant. Apart from needless injury and loss of life, which commonly cause problems during transportation . potential losses from a container ship ? re might include hull A number of shipping lines are using arti? cial intelligence damage, total loss of the ship, cargo and container loss and to develop increasingly sophisticated algorithms to search damage, claims between ship owners, charterers and slot- through their booking systems to identify potential misdecla- charterers, environmental damage prevention and clean-up, ration, including Hapag-Lloyd’s Cargo Patrol, Exis Technol- salvage costs, wreck removal, ? nes, investigation and legal ogies’ Hazcheck Detect and ZIM’s ZimGuard. costs. With the increased size of container ships and their Other ventures include the Maritime Blockchain Labs carrying capacity, a large container ? re will severely impact (MBL) Misdeclaration of Dangerous Goods pilot, using the global marine insurance and P&I market with the sheer blockchain technology to verify documentation and demon- 15 value of the property at risk, not to mention the GA effort strate the end-to-end delivery of dangerous goods .

of trying to collect security, vastly scaled up for the largest Meanwhile, IUMI and other major stakeholders have co- container ships. With present claims potentially running into sponsored a submission to the IMO Maritime Safety Com- tens or even hundreds of millions of US$, there is the fear mittee’s 102nd session to amend SOLAS in respect of im- that a total loss of a 20,000 TEU vessel and her cargo might proved detection, protection and ? re? ghting capabilities 16 exceed $1 billion. A considerable burden is also placed on onboard container ships .

the salvage industry and external ? re? ghting services, with Further pressure may also need to be brought to bear on the signi? cant challenge of ? ghting such ? res due to the in- rogue shippers by building a world-wide consensus for those creased beam and stack heights of the larger container ships. misdeclaring dangerous container cargoes to face criminal

In addition, ports of refuge face the nightmare of how to deal sanctions in their home country, with jail time for deliber- with say 10,000 burned-out container shells and their cargo, ately endangering life and the marine environment.

many of which are not insured and abandoned. For example, exemplary support was recently given by the Singapore MPA

References and PSA in providing a port of refuge to MOL Charisma, the [1] Allianz Safety and Shipping Review 2020 [2] Gard conference – Container ship ? res – 31 October 2019 latest victim of this year’s major container ? res. The human [3] TT Club – Campaign for Greater Container Safety – March 2019 and ? nancial carnage in? icted by a single undeclared or mis- [4] National Cargo Bureau (NCB) white paper – 6 July 2020 [5] Cefor - ibid declared cargo in a badly stowed container onboard a modern [6] Gard Insight – Tackling cargo misdeclaration – 21 March 2018 container ship cannot therefore be overstated.

[7] TT Club – ibid [8] NCB – ibid [9] TT Club – ibid

Solutions [10] IUMI Position Paper on ? re? ghting on container vessels and proposal on ? re? ghting systems by the German Insurance Association (GDV) – 18 September 2017

Major efforts are however underway to deal with this prob- [11] IUMI Policy Agenda – 10. Safety of container vessels – 24 August 2020 lem from both the supply chain side and in improving the [12] IUMI and GDV - ibid [13] Gard conference – ibid – Rosenby Engineering HydroPenTM distributed by Viking Life- ? re? ghting systems onboard.

Saving Equipment [14] TT Club - ibid

In an ideal world every cargo loaded in every container [15] https://wearebloc.io/labs/ would be checked before shipping, but the cost of such an [16] IUMI Policy Agenda - ibid undertaking would be immense. At the same time, there www.marinelink.com 17

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