MSC Flamina

[John Arton]

Container ship MSC Flammina suffered explosion and fire in deck stow of containers. 2 crew dead and 2 seriously injured.
Ship anandoned mid Atlantic. There were also 2 passengers on board in addition to the ships crew.
Cause of fire and explosion as yet unknown.
Google MSC Flammina and there are some excellent pics.
Strangely enough not one peep of this marine disaster in the news at all as it only involved seamen, or am I being a bit too cynical.
rgds
Capt. John Arton (ret'd)

[Ivan Cloherty]

Tut tut John, cynical ! never let it be said, perhaps the Press haven't realised there are "passengers" aboard

[Captain Kong]

Seamen are and always have been dispensible, plenty more where they came from.
No one is interested in Seafaring these days.
If one Politician dies it is all over the news.
Cheers
Brian.

[Tony Wilding]

One big problem with container ships, does the container have what is stated inside, or hazardous material, ? there have been a few fires on such vessels recently, must be impossible to extinguish with so many carried,

[Captain Kong]

I dont know, I have never sailed on a Container Ship. I would rather sail on a Tanker.
Cheers
Brian

[Keith Tindell]

My fire service experience is that these things are loaded in a hap hazard way, frequently we found containers with hazardous materials loaded well beneath the others, and only when alongside, any hope of dealing with, or moving them. It must have been a nightmare with a small crew trying to put the fire out, i would say impossible. A mayday as soon as smoke was issuing from a container, may have saved lives. KT

[Tony Wilding]

MSC have had a few problems recently, i hope the Ship can be saved, as a matter of interest MV RENA has all containers removed, now waiting for tenders for Wreck Removal.

[John Arton]

Despite international regs etc. I guess that often the contents of a container differ widely from that stated on its manifest. Many containers are "stuffed" with a number of different shippers cargo in order to fill up the space inaside.
The problem of illegal or misleading manifests goes back to the 60/70 when two men lost their lives on the Asia Freighter when they entered on of the holds to do maintenance work on the lighting (I think) but were overcome and killed by highly toxic gas leaking from a container that, again if I remember correctley, was listed as carrying medical supplies.
In the 70's I can remember carrying containers on deck marked a medical goods only to find that after some bad weather they started leaking foul smelling liquid. Turns out the container was full of hides.
The journey a container takes before it actually gets loaded is usually from the stuffing depot, to port, to storage, to ship.
Its contents will be sealed so all documentation will originate at the container stuffing depot and everyone else later relies on this documentation, so a dodgy stuffing depot can lead to a dodgy manifest or b/l. Also you would think that having most likely been transported by road you would expect thats its weight would be accurate...not so.
Cargo planners take all the info. sent to them by the booking agents and then plan the ships stow using weights, size and hazardous materials contents as listed. All sounds great but no one actually phyically checks the container once its been loaded at the stuffing depot. A number of ports have installed sophisticated scanners that scan each container as it comes into their port prior to be put in its stacking area but I guess that even the most sophisticated scanner can not get every thing right every time, so even today I would guess that even today there must be containers going around that contain items completley different to that which are listed on its bill of lading or shipping document.
rgds
Capt. John Arton (ret'd)

[John Cassels]

John , with all due respect , I was Ch.Mate on the Asiafreighter at the time. Your description as to what happened is just not
correct.

The posts so far are pretty wide of the mark as regards the loading and stuffing of containers and the loading and stowage of them
on board. It is a subject that that grates a nerve as does the OBO subject as Bill Davis will testify.

[Gulliver]

Further info to John's initial report on the MSC FLAMINIA :-

75,590-gt German-flagged MSC Flaminia carrying 25 crew suffered explosion and fire in a cargo hold mid-way between UK and Canada on July 14. 2012 Oil tanker DS Crown arrived on scene to aid in the evacuation. Six other merchant vessels also proceeded to the location to help with the search and rescue operation but were more than six hours from the location. Four crew had suffered injuries, one of which died. One other crew member is missing. [From Hildegard "Hilde" E. Krause, 16-7-2012] -Cargolaw.com

MSC FLAMINIA-Courtesy of Amani..jpg