Another beautiful day, a glorious Sunday. Again the whole town was out and it looked like that those who were not in church were all out on the sea front. Although embarkation was yesterday; during the day guests still trickled in. Some of them delayed by transport issues and some because they lived in the area and did not see the use of staying a night on board as the ship was not sailing. I have seen that before, either with boarding guests or disembarking guests and I have a hard time understanding it. You paid for the night so you are wasting money and while on board you can enjoy an elaborate meal and a show but instead you opt for a quick sandwich when coming home. (As you first have to go shopping, to stock up the fridge)
Training continued today with the Sweep Teams. This is another addition to our safety plans. Sweep Teams are not required under SOLAS and as a result most company’s including HAL only had impromptu procedures in place; to be executed if somebody was missing during a mustering. SOLAS only requires that a Full Muster shall be held. It does not say exactly what you should do if you do not get a 100% count. It only says that there should be a 100% count. Thus if a 100% count was not achieved the captain would dispatch crew, the security guards, cabin stewards etc. to find the missing persons. That worked, as has been proven during drills but it was not formulized.
Thus now we have a complete and official “Sweep Operation Policy” which ensures that for each area in the ship a group of crew members is allocated to start searching incase a Full Muster reveals that people are missing.
So what do we have now as Sweep Teams?
- The Passenger Assist Team. These are the cabin stewards. They were already there and they search – sweep — cabins to ensure that all guests are going to the Muster.
- The Passenger Area Sweep Team. These are Dining Room Stewards who will walk all the public areas – sweep – from stern to bow and back and search for missing persons.
- The Crew Area Sweep Team. These are Kitchen Staff who will – sweep – search all crew areas, cabins, workshops, mess rooms etc. section by section for missing persons.
Group 2 and 3 will only come into action when during the Mustering the count does not come to 100%. In principle all guests and crew always will go to Boat drill or a mustering during an emergency at sea. The problem is that they do not always stay. We come across some “experienced” guests who try to sneak off when they have been checked off. That is most of the time noted and then you get the angry voice of the Master over the P.A. system, but not always and they manage to get back into the warmth of the ship, and now they will come across a Sweep Team.
It is really useful of course, as there could be guests or crew alike who could be injured or dis-orientated in an emergency. Not everybody reacts rationally during an emergency when stress and anxiety levels go up.
The crew has to learn the basic physical reactions to Emergency News
These crew, who will be assigned to these teams need training. First of all for what they have to do and how, but then also in Crowd Management for the case when they come across upset, disorientated, belligerent, erratic, stressed out, panicking or fearful persons.
The basic rules to handle these people are quite simple and thus we can do the lessons on board by teaching the right state of mind and a number of tricks to get these people to do, what you want them to do. Most of my audience has never dealt with this before and they all find it fascinating.
Just before departure the Captain announced that there was a technical issue and we were sailing a little bit later. It will be a good thing that we are not in Quebec tomorrow. The wind is expected to breeze up in the early morning to about 40 – 50 knots. We will be sailing down the St. Lawrence River and that means it will not affect us that much.
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