MOL Completes Containership Collision Drills
MOL Managing Executive Officer Junichiro Ikeda (left) and MOL Executive Officer Takaaki Inoue (right) (Photo: MOL)
Scene of Tabletop Drill. The drill was held via videoconference among MOL Liner (HKG), the ship management company (HKG) and the Emergency Control Headquarters. (Photo: MOL)
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL) announced the completion of a tabletop drill done in cooperation with the fifth Regional Coast Guard Headquarters. The scenario entailed a containership operated by MOL Liner Division (Hong Kong) and managed by an MOL Group ship management company (Hong Kong) colliding with a coastal freighter in Osaka Bay, Japan.
The drill was held on Thursday, May 16, with aim to further strengthening MOL's emergency response structure, which is based on the MOL Group Corporate Principles - protecting the environment by maintaining strict, safe operations, and navigation standards. The exercise also was designed to ensure the smooth, precise communications that are so critical in the event of a marine incident, involving an MOL-operated containership in which containers and hazardous objects or materials go overboard and a fire breaks out.
Main participants included fifth Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, MOL president, executives and relevant divisions, which teamed up to organize an Emergency Control Headquarters, MOL Liner Division (Hong Kong), the ship management company New Asian Shipping Co., Ltd., and ship management headquarters MOL Ship Management Co., Ltd.
The drill scenario was that the containership, which was under way toward Port of Kobe, collided with a coastal freighter in Osaka Bay, which was also under way in the bay. The collision caused containers and hazardous objects on the vessel gone overboard and a fire broke out on the deck.
The scenario began with a report from the containership. MOL immediately reported the incident to the fifth Regional Coast Guard Headquarters. MOL then organized an Emergency Control Headquarters within the company, took first-response tasks and procedures that included information gathering, communications among the concerned parties, and directions and instructions to the vessel, and held a joint media response drill.
The company continues to sharpen its group-wide emergency response readiness by sharing know-how accumulated in these training sessions throughout the MOL Group and its fleet.
