The National Transportation Safety Board released its 2020 Safer Seas Digest, a compendium of the NTSB’s maritime accident investigations involving loss of life, injury, and major property damage completed in 2020.
Safer Seas Digest 2020 details the lessons learned from 42 maritime accidents involving contact with fixed objects, sinks, collisions, fires, explosions, floods, stranding and capsizing. Among the investigations included in the 112-page report are the fire aboard the Conception where 34 lives were lost and the collision that claimed 11 lives aboard the USS Fitzgerald.
The lessons learned from the 2020 Safer Seas Digest are divided into 14 categories:
• Navigating bridges
• Standard of Operating Procedures
• Smoke detection
• Travel planning and dynamic risk assessment
• Effective communication
• Operation in high water / high current conditions
• Dangers of lithium-ion batteries
• Crew training
• Boat speed
• Storage of flammable or combustible materials
• Close the ventilation inlets during a fire
• Effective inspection and maintenance of the hull
• Inspection of control links
• fatigue
The NTSB’s Office of Marine Safety investigates major marine casualties in U.S. navigable waters and accidents involving U.S.-flagged vessels around the world. This is the eighth year that the NTSB has published a Safer Seas Digest. To read the report, click here.
