Viewpoint: Clearing up the mess
With the incidence of fires on very large containerships on the rise, with about one occurring a month, salvors face huge difficulties due to the vessels’ sheer size and the volume and inaccessibility of the cargo. A huge range of skills must be summoned, including dangerous goods specialists, waste experts, chemists and gas technologists
Salvors face enormous safety concerns in the aftermath of fires on containerships as they rummage in a fearsome cocktail of hazardous debris and they raise serious questions for the industry as boxes are packed ever tighter, goods are misdeclared and architects design vessels with increased teu capacity