NFPA Journal - September/October 2019 - 35

on large vessels-Jacksonville, Florida;
Houston, Texas; Seattle, Washington.
They've shown themselves to be proactive in training their members in
marine firefighting, Herndon said.
But experts stress that fire service
preparedness for marine incidents is
just one facet of a broader communitywide preparedness. Post told me he's
fortunate in that, in the New London
area, not only is the local fire service
prepared for responding to fires on
large marine vessels, but so is the community as a whole. The county, he said,
has a task force-comprised of first
responders from various specialties and
levels of government, and supported
by the US Department of Homeland
Security-that plans for maritime
emergencies. A fire on a ship carrying
hazardous materials is one example of
an incident the task force has prepared
for. In addition to firefighters working
to extinguish such a blaze, Post said
other emergency response officials
would be tasked with monitoring
atmospheric conditions on land and
determining whether certain parts of
the city need to be evacuated.
Similar multifaceted response teams
exist around the country. In Portland,
Maine, for example, a team called
the Casco Bay Emergency Response
Group works to protect the city's
harbor, which houses the largest tonnage seaport in New England, despite
Portland's population of about 70,000.
The group includes local firefighters,
police officers, Coast Guard members,
and other emergency response officials,
according to Jon Hendricks, deputy
chief in charge of the marine division
in the Portland Fire Department. The
emergency response group meets annually to train for incidents that are most
likely to occur in the harbor: collisions
between two ships, ships running
aground, active shooters aboard ferries,
fires on large vessels. "We've laid out
the parameters of who would be in control, what agencies would respond, and
how," Hendricks said.
Portland is one of many US port cities
whose concerns over marine vessel
safety include fires or other emergencies aboard cruise ships. Many of these
ships tower over the city's Old Port

district as they're docked near shops,
residences, and parking structures, and
would represent the largest structure
by far that any of the city's 230 or so
firefighters could respond to. Hendricks
said his department and the cruise
ship companies have worked closely
over the years to make sure Portland
firefighters are familiar with the vessels
in case they need to respond to an incident onboard. Likewise, Post said New
London officials have had to consider
how they would shelter hundreds or
even thousands of cruise ship passengers should an event leave them unable
to get back onboard. Historically, fires
on cruise ships have generated many
of the same challenges as fires on other
large marine vessels, said Guy Colonna,
senior director of Technical Services at
NFPA, and a couple of cruise ship fires
that occurred in the 1980s helped spur
the creation of NFPA 1405.
Despite these examples of preparedness, experts like Herndon and Post,
as well as Russell, believe there are
probably more cases of unprepared
communities out there than there are
cases of prepared ones. "It's definitely
something that could sneak up on
folks," Post said. "Especially as you lose
those senior firefighters who may have
had experience in the Navy or seen ship
fires in the past...so that should be a
concern." Post said the lack of experience fighting fires on large marine
vessels became a problem on the night
of the USS Miami blaze, when firefighters responding from nearby traditional,
non-specialized departments didn't
know how to approach the situation.
"Many of the local firefighters just said,
'I'm not going in there,'" he said.
The solutions to reversing these
preparedness woes already exist in
the form of training and documents
from organizations like NFPA. The new
NFPA 1300, Standard on Community
Risk Assessment and Community Risk
Reduction Plan Development, for example, tasks users with identifying the
risks to their community and devising
a plan for mitigating them. The document "can help coastal communities
that house busy ports identify their
unique risks," said Karen Berard-Reed,
a community risk reduction strategist

at NFPA. "Ports and harbors play a
role in critical infrastructure involving
transportation, fuel, and trade that
should be considered when planning
for community safety." (Read BerardReed's recent NFPA Journal feature
article about NFPA 1300 and community risk reduction at nfpa.org/gotrisk.)
From a firefighting standpoint, Russell said he hopes the changes to NFPA
307 prompted by the Coast Guard
request will at least underscore the
issue of marine firefighting. "The Coast
Guard will now have a place to point
people to," he said. While the new
annex material won't dictate marine
firefighting tactics, it will make clear
the plans that vessel owners must have
in place to respond effectively to a fire
on their ship, such as having a contract
with marine salvage and firefighting
teams that would respond in the event
of a fire. Still, Russell said, the most
likely first responders to such an incident outside of the ship's crew would
be a local fire department, which is
why documents like NFPA 1005 and
NFPA 1405 are critical sources of
education.
But according to Bob Fash, the
NFPA staff liaison to both documents,
their use isn't very prevalent. Fewer
than 1,000 firefighters representing
just three states-Alabama, Florida,
and Virginia-are certified as marine
firefighters via NFPA 1005. Herndon,
who sits on the technical committees
for both NFPA 1005 and NFPA 1405,
believes that the documents should be
used more to address what he sees as a
consistent problem, as should the training options that exist.
"Although we haven't seen a catastrophic fire in a port, there have still
been consistent major shipboard fires
in the US, like the USS Miami fire,"
Herndon said. "I could probably name
in every decade major shipboard fires
that have occurred in the US, and in
each one you'll see the same problem occurring: a lack of training. The
courses are being developed, and NFPA
has standards-we just have to get firefighters to take the trainings and use
those education materials."
ANGELO VERZONI is a staff writer for NFPA Journal.

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NFPA Journal - September/October 2019

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