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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 6
February 2010
Station bills: Talk about emergency duties
In the many conversations I’ve had with captains and crewmen while conducting drills, one in particular stands out in my mind. It was with a captain whose vessel went down who credited the survival of the entire crew to dinner conversations they had about abandoning ship.
This was in big contrast to a talk I had with a crewman who went overboard while setting gear out and nearly lost his life because the crew had never talked about how to retrieve a crewmember from the water.
Why were there dinner conversations about abandoning ship? Because this captain had posted the vessel’s station bill, which details emergency assignments for crewmen, in the galley. Simply having it in view prompted many discussions of each crewman’s assigned duties over meals.
The captain also posted a station bill by each bunk in hopes that, “through osmosis, they will remember their emergency assignments.”
In addition to requiring the posting of a vessel profile, which identifies the location of the emergency equipment, how to make a radio distress call, how to don an immersion suit, and general alarm information, federal fishing vessel safety regulations require the posting of the vessel’s station bill.
The station bill should be tailored to each individual vessel based on its size, design, fishery, and the total number of crewmen it carries.
A station bill ought to: explain emergency signals and the general alarm that summons the crew to the mustering; list immersion suit locations; assign crew positions – captain, mate, engineer, and deckhand – for the four critical emergencies, which are fire, flooding, man overboard, and abandon ship; and spell out where each should go and what to bring with them when carrying out those assigned duties.
Duties
All crewmembers should be thoroughly familiar with the duties they are assigned to perform in the event of an emergency. Among these duties are:
How to abandon the vessel;
How to fight fires in different locations on the vessel;
How to recover an individual from the water;
How to minimize the effects of unintentional flooding;
How to launch a life raft or survival craft;
How to don an immersion suit and a wearable PFD;
How to make a radio distress call (mayday);
How to use visual distress signals, including flares, mirror, dye, and others;
How to activate a general alarm;
How to don a fireman’s outfit and SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus); and
How to report an inoperative alarm system and/or fire detection system.
Practice
Once you and your crew have acquired the basic skills, it’s important to practice them. Practicing with the survival gear has an added benefit in that it helps ensure that the gear is working properly.
It is far better to discover during a drill rather than during an emergency that your safety equipment is faulty or overdue for servicing.
Bear in mind that, even if the equipment cannot actually be used, discussing safety and emergency procedures educates the new crewmember and refreshes the experienced crewman.
Fred Mattera
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