Safety Measures After Sudden Meteorological Disasters

Reporter Liu Xiao

In recent years, the abnormal climate has disturbed the footsteps of global business. How can we ensure ship safety in the context of increasing abnormal climate and sudden extreme weather?

During the interview on “how to prevent ship safety accidents caused by sudden extreme weathers” , it occurred to the journalist that “perhaps the accident may never happen If ship pilots had prejudged navigation meteorology and be aware of possibilities.”

About the ignorance of the weather on the voyage, an expert also mentioned such a phenomenon, that is ship pilots generally lack adequate extreme weather forecast.He admitted that this phenomenon is common and it may lead to consequences seriously affecting ship safety operations.

Along with the increasing frequency of extreme weather emergencies in recent years, the accidents of inland waterways vessels increased signif i cantly. The expert said that recently the trend of ocean-going ships becoming large has given the ships stronger capability to resist extreme weather. In addition, experienced meteorological or oceanographic experts from meteorological navigation organization might evaluate navigation climate based on multi data to avoid extreme weather. In contrast,inland waterway vessels cannot compare with ocean going vessels in this aspect. The expert said: “Ship dimension cannot be changed due to the environmental limitation of inland river. So professional and detailed weather forecast is needed to guarantee ship safety under abnormal climate or extreme weather.”

At present, the meteorological services in China are categorized in two types, one is called the public meteorological service and the other is called professional meteorological service, namely commercial service. The development of commercial meteorological services is still in its infancy and it is far from being in scale, let alone an industry. This has affected the forecasting of the development of small scale sudden inclement weather,thus affecting the safety of ships in that region.

The journalist scanned over cases of ship accidents caused by sudden clement weather and found out that some sudden huge waves, even “bizarre waves”were destructive, such as that of South Africa. Ships sailing past the south east coast of South Africa tend to break and sink due to sailors’ ignorance of the “bizarre waves” and the weather that produce such waves. As the expert analyzed, those waves maintain their own wave length and characteristics under normal conditions.Superposition seldom happens to form abnormal waves in a short time. On the open seas, these high waves are generally in sine curve and ships of good conditions can go safely through as long as they are manipulated correctly with experienced pilots.