North Sea collision

[KenAdams]

Two ships have collided in the North Sea, one carrying A1 jet fuel.

Aside from the environmental impact which is yet to be determined, one of the ships was anchored. How do you not see an anchored ship?! Possibly it was foggy?

I'm dreading the environmental damage that could be caused. I'm praying it can be contained. I live on this stretch of the coast. There are puffin and seal colonies. It's an important area for many species of migrating birds, fish and mammals.

It's always the most vulnerable that suffer the most in a situation like this.

The impact on wildlife could be devastating. Some expert said fish have some inbuilt disaster avoidance so will be well clear but sea birds and seals won't in the same way. The environmental impact could be horrendous.

Also, having lived in Grimsby briefly (not by choice) I made the same quip as @XDownwiththissortofthingX about being rescued only to end up in Grimsby.

From an environmental POV this may be of interest:

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/Kerosene-Jet-Fuel.pdf

Good old GY.

@15minutesaday Thanks. That's helpful

You can see the glow of the fire from Filey beach. I dread to think how much devastation it will cause to this stretch of the coastline, for marine life and tourism.

There is still one person missing. So they haven't rescued everyone.

BBC says everyone accounted for, one in hospital.

According to marine traffic website it had not changed course for over 100 miles,

Local news saying could be pollution as far down as Norfok.

BBC now saying one person missing, as pp said.

How original, there are many mumsnetters who call Grimsby home. There is still one crew member missing. We are all really worried about the wildlife and the impact on the beaches our children play on. Just this winter a colony of seals down the road had hundreds of gorgeous pups.

The official conclusion will be either human error or mechanical failure.

But as it affects the U.K. and the US military, and we’re in the middle of Ukraine negotiations, I’d imagine Putin may have a hand in it.

Someone has been arrested for gross negligence manslaughter. I'm guessing the captain of the Solange.

Yes, it registered that it was anchored there so no excuse.

There is one person missing.

This is just awful

This is terrible. Absolutely no way it was accidental. Tankers travel this stretch regularly, it’s like a busy highway for shipping. They also have extremely high tech navigation equipment that allows them to keep going in pretty much any weather conditions as well as avoid collisions. They don’t need to see, they set a course and navigate with computers.

Tankers can track other ships’ direction, crew can talk to other ships crew and tell the exact position of much smaller ships for miles in every direction. This is either a deliberate attack or the captain and crew were just plain negligent.

It's the Gulf of MEXICO.

That fuckwitted man can't just cross one name out and write another name in because he wants to claim it for America. I'm astounded he hasn't renamed New Mexico yet.

Who knows what else is happening? Musk does. He's in the driving seat.

I agree. The official line has been determined to be negligence, we will never know what actually happened.

The official line has been determined to be negligence, we will never know what actually happened.

Not sure how can there be an official line at this stage?

Surely the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (or whatever they are called) will have to run their inquiry and that’s probably barely started.

Even with gross negligence, in theory it should be impossible to crash one of these massive ships. The safety mechanisms on the navigation tech would automatically reset and adjust the course way in advance if anything was in the way. The crew would have to agree to override it, or not set it at all somehow, knowing full well this would be a monumental hazard.

The ship at anchor would also be tracking the approaching Tanker. It must have been terrifying with every red alert on their systems going off.

I can believe that gear or systems failure might cause a collision - if you can’t steer, you can’t steer - but it seems more likely than not you would have some warning and be sending out distress messages as you approached.

Well we might; in many previous accidents the investigations uncover a history of negligent practices or a sequence of bad luck or both. Or it might carry on looking fishy.
Given it was 10am and they were approaching port I find it hard to believe only one person out of the 16 or so crew was alert to what was going on. Unless they tell us that was the case, and there was a reason.

A man has already been arrested indicating the human error line.

The US tanker was carrying 220,000 barrels of jet fuel for the US air force. US military would never leave investigation of this purely down the Humberside police and the MAIB, they’ll do their own.

If there are any parallels with what goes on in commercial aviation (and there are lots of parallels between the two industries) it’s not unknown for charges to be laid against key individuals for reasons various very shortly after an accident but then the legal processes stop until a formal inquiry is carried out by whoever is charged with the job..

That’s the AAIB for aircraft, I’m guessing the MAIB in this case. The police might get involved again post that inquiry, which can take months or years.

I certainly wouldn’t expect involvement of the US or UK police to mean there’s no independent inquiry, or that we will never know what went on…but I’d be interested to hear the POV from someone more acquainted with the maritime set up.