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| Coast Guard to Board Each Foreign Ship | ||
| 2004-06-30 | ||
| The Coast Guard will board every foreign-flagged vessel that sails into a U.S. port beginning Thursday to check whether it is complying with rules aimed at foiling terrorists. A maritime treaty signed by about 150 countries requires each ship to have a security officer, alarm system, automatic identification system, access restrictions to the engine room and bridge, and a method of checking IDs of people who board. Each ship must have a certificate signed by the country that flags it saying it is in compliance with the treaty. Rear Adm. Larry Hereth said that 700 Coast Guardsmen, including about 500 reservists, will be part of the effort to board all ships as they enter the ports. "We're going to take a pretty hard line," said Hereth, the Coast Guard's director of port security. Joe Cox, president of the Chamber of Shipping of America, which represents U.S. ship owners, said he expects the Coast Guard to enforce strictly the requirement that each vessel has a signed certificate saying it complies with the standards. "I don't think there's a ship around here dumb enough to come into U.S. waters without the certificate," Cox said. Many foreign-flagged ships and overseas ports won't meet the standards, according to statistics provided by the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that monitors shipping safety. According to the IMO's most recent figures, 71 percent of tankers, 89 percent of cruise ships and 56 percent of cargo ships had certificates. Only 32 percent of port facilities had approved security plans required under the treaty. Although ships and ports in most of Europe and Japan have complied, maritime facilities in some developing countries remain problematic, the IMO says. The agency has no enforcement powers, however, and relies instead on the implicit economic threat to governments that don't comply with the new International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #11 aren't all ships required to have harbor master pilots board/steer them? I know in San Diego bay they do.... this should be frosting on the inspection cake |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-30 9:46:12 PM |
| #10 Hey Lucky, are you up here in the Puget Sound area? If you want to have ferry nightmares read about the sinking of the the Estonia in The Outlaw Sea. |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2004-06-30 9:22:26 PM |
| #9 "Rope burns, unusual bruises and scars", sounds like they will be detaining a lot of people from West Hollywood. |
| Posted by: Sgt.DT 2004-06-30 7:25:28 PM |
| #8 C_L you can add to your list of flags of convenience a new one - the first Islamic flag of convenience. Here's the story. And if you'd like to have some chilling news for breakfast, how about this item from the port of Los Angeles - where a container actually exploded on the dock and nobody did anything about it: "The accidental explosion of a container on the dock of the Port of Los Angeles on April 28 underscored the problem. Gasoline fumes from a pickup truck inside the container were apparently ignited by a spark from a battery, blowing the locked steel doors open and spilling the contents, which included 900 bottles of LPG butane gas, according to Michael Mitre, Coast Port Security director at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. âThere was virtually no response,â Mitre told a House panel on maritime security last week. âThere was no evacuation. There was no shutdown of work ⦠It could have been something that was a biological or chemical release; it could be a radioactive release. No one knew. But at the time, the terminal was absolutely not prepared.â Mitre said the explosion also highlights a major deficiency in container inspection. âExport cargo is not treated the same way as import cargo,â he said. âWe have cargo coming in through the gates that is not having to show what the contents are." As a result, terrorists inside the U.S. would have a much easier time loading a container on an outbound shipment, he said." By the way, C_L, in the Halifax explosion of 1900, which was the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima, the main reason so many people died was that the Mont Blanc burned for hours and lots of people went down to the dockside to watch it burn. The crew had abandoned ship, knowing what it was carrying, so the vessel drifted. When it blew, all the people, including many children, watching on the dock were killed. So, if you see a burning ship full of gun cotton drifting in a port, don't stare at it for hours. |
| Posted by: Patrick 2004-06-30 12:10:36 PM |
| #7 Beat me to it,Q. |
| Posted by: Raptor 2004-06-30 10:15:10 AM |
| #6 Whoa, C_L...no kidding? Here's an account of another French ship that blew up in an American harbor with devastating results. Coincidence? Texas City Disaster 1947 |
| Posted by: Quana 2004-06-30 9:45:49 AM |
| #5 I worry most about the small harbors. The Coast Guard is checking everything going into the big ports. For example, you could sail a medium sized freighterpacked with ANFO, into Marina del Rey or Newport Harbor near here, detonate it, and have killed tens of thousands before USCG could react. The Islamists would be much more interested in killing 20K innocents than knocking over a few cranes and a couple of thousand port workers. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-06-30 9:11:21 AM |
| #4 Very interesting historical data concerning deadly explosion of the Mount Blanc. The Coast Guard has an incredible task before them. |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-06-30 4:26:50 AM |
| #3 Where I live C-L it's is 'the' thing I worry about. Early on, after 911, there was a Washington Ferry service bru-ha-ha about whether a captain of the ferry had the right to search any vehicle on his ship. A good friend, prone to LLL media slant, was very upset about the possible search of his motorcar, nice car. I told him I was scared about one of those cars going boom and even worse about a ship attack. I'm glad that USCG is going about this in the obvious way but only in that I'm hoping they are thinking much deeper. I would like to see a massive blimp force patroling our ocean searoutes. Or a technology that could do it better. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-06-30 3:57:22 AM |
| #2 Rantburgers are encouraged to read The Outlaw Sea to understand how flags of convenience, hidden ship ownership and decades of experience in feigned compliance with the regulations, will make a mockery of what the Coast Guard has been charged with. This is a very serious issue. You can inflict enormous damage with a ship carrying the right cargo. The explosion of the Mount Blanc in Halifax harbor in 1917 leveled much of the town and killed over 1900. It would take surprisingly few resources to buy (or hijack) a beater ship, turn it into a massive fertilizer bomb and sail it right into a crowded port. Not too many Pakistani flagged ships in the merchant fleet. (The top seven flags are Panama, Liberia, Bahamas, Malta, Cyprus, the Marshall Islands, and St. Vincent and The Grenadines) But there are Pakistani crew everywhere. I wonder if the Coast Guard will also be checking for "minor injuries such as 'rope burns,' 'unusual bruises' and 'scars' possibly suffered while training in terrorist camps in that ally Muslim country." |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2004-06-30 2:12:51 AM |
| #1 This is the kind of news which makes Osama cry in his cave. |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-06-30 12:54:33 AM |