Dutch Safety Board Says Maritime Emergency Response Needs Overhaul

The Dutch Safety Board is calling for an overhaul of the systems used for responding to maritime emergencies. It completed a nearly two-year review of the response to the 2023 fire aboard the vehicle carrier Fremantle Highway pointing to a lack of training and coordination which contributed to a delayed response and the likely injury of several crewmembers aboard the vessel.

The report concludes that the emergency response system is not properly organized so calls are not properly prioritized and the different organizations are not working together in their response. They concluded that the vulnerabilities of the system only become apparent when there is a complex request for assistance that demands a coordinated response from multiple organizations.

The case of the Fremantle Highway was one of those complex requests. The failure of the system saw seven crewmembers feeling compelled to jump from the burning ship from heights of up to 30 meters (nearly 100 feet). The board concluded that the focus had remained for too long on firefighting rather than moving to search and rescue to evacuate the seafarers in a timely fashion. As a result, the crewmembers were trapped unable to reach safety and the lifeboats were rendered unusable. Six crewmembers jumped suffering injuries and a seventh also jumped despite a KNRM (Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Institution) captain urging them not to jump due to the dangers. All the crewmembers were injured from jumping into the ocean and one later died of his injuries.

“The Dutch Safety Board has repeatedly pointed out in recent years that the Coastguard Center is insufficiently capable of assuming control when it needs to collaborate with other parties,” says Erica Bakkum, a member of the Dutch Safety Board. “It does not help that several ministries share administrative responsibility for the Coastguard. That setup makes it harder to take rapid action.”

The report of the fire aboard the Fremantle Highway was received just before midnight on July 25, 2023, but the board says “assistance was slow to materialize.” The priority was placed on firefighting without aerial support to determine the level of severity. It was not until 0200 that a Coastguard surveillance aircraft with thermal imaging reached the vessel and determined the full extent of the spread of the fire. The crew requested evacuation at 0230 but it took another 45 minutes for helicopters to reach the vessel.

The safety board in reviewing the timeline found that the helicopters assigned to pick up the specialized firefighting unit were left waiting in Rotterdam for over an hour and the team hesitated to board due to a lack of clarity on whether the fire could be safely engaged. The helicopters were sent to the vessel without the firefighting team.

A lack of communication and coordination also created onshore delays. Hospitals were not notified till shortly before the injured arrived. Ambulances had to wait outside the airport for 15 minutes because entry gates were locked. 

The board concludes that the lack of early aerial support directly contributed to the problems. It also says the decision-making process was bogged down by incomplete communications between the Coastguard and other agencies.

“The system for responding to incidents in the North Sea needs to be put in order as soon as possible,” the report concludes. The Safety Board is advocating for the appointment of a mandated director who can coordinate the necessary improvements in the response to emergencies. They are calling for the Ministries of Infrastructure and Water Management, Defense, and Justice and Security to work together to collectively put the emergency response system in order as quickly as possible.

Currently, the board says it is unclear which scenarios actually require the deployment of the maritime firefighting team. In the case of the Fremantle Highway, it concludes the situation involved an “undesirable degree of interference between the tasks of maritime firefighting and rescue.”

They are calling for establishing a digital exchange of information between the Coastguard Coordination Center and the others involved in the emergency response chain of command. The center’s assessment and decision-making processes, training, and exercises have to be linked and improved. They are also calling for clarifying which scenarios require firefighting versus rescue and applying an approach to address the potential for interference between the different teams’ deployment.