Book reflection

The book I have read is ”Casualty management guidelines” (ISBN 978-1-906915-39-1) published by The Nautical Institute, the reason that I chose this book is twofold, it is an interesting topic and I got the book at a seminar at work and should have read it a long time ago. There are 13 chapters in the book, covering every possible topic in a ship disaster – from the roles of the shipmaster, the ship-owner and the harbour master to insurance and how to deal with media.

I will take this opportunity to discuss one topic that has been on my mind for quite some time now what effect does dealing with others' catastrophes have on us? When you spend most of your time at work preparing for a disaster and kind of hoping for something dramatic to happen to practise your skills? Can you imagine how boring it would be to be a doctor if no one ever gets sick? Or a police if there is no criminality? But can you say that out loud without people thinking that you are insane? Helping out when something did not turn out the way it should have, weather it is a ship hitting the quay, a child breaking a leg or people taken hostage, is of course an honourable task but it do involve the suffering of others.

I am working with technical support to ship-owners and colleagues around the world, they contact us if there is a grounding, a damaged rudder or if cracks are found in the hull structure, for instance. In addition to that I am part of our emergency team, dealing with ship disasters as described in the book. My work days get really interesting and exciting when something happens and we have to mobilize a team of people to handle the case and give advice about the damages and how to do proper repairs. That means that in order for me to have something interesting to do at work, something bad has to happen to someone else, i.e. the ship-owner or ship crew. So far, there have not been any accidents when I have been on duty, which of course is good but it is also boring. We run exercises with the ship owners which is interesting and gives us a good chance to practice what we know and tune our emergency procedures, but exercises are not as interesting as real cases which are normally more complex (as one can learn from reading the book). When I tell my friends that I find it exciting with ship collisions I always have to add – provided there are no injuries or fatalities. After I read the book I find it even more interesting with casualties and all the different professions involved solving the problems, but I hope that my next duty week will be as quiet as the previous one, at least outside normal office hours.