When we use the term "Crisis Management", we normally think about big problems.  An oil spill, a major collision, a boat sinking; all bring to mind the need for Crisis Management.

Crisis Management involves bringing a team together and solving the problems at hand with a disciplined, goal driven approach.

We can use the guiding principles of Crisis Management onboard for problems that may arise in a towboat operation, big or small.  The towboat crews in most cases are the first responders to a crisis and will need to be ready to make an initial response as a team.

Are all crewmembers up to speed on the Emergency Station Bill?

Let's look at the principles of Crisis Management.

Crisis Management is the art of making decisions to head off or mitigate the effects of an event, often while the event is unfolding.  This often means making decisions about the actions of your crew while under stress and while you are lacking pieces of critical information.

Crisis Management has a series of activities:

Planning - Planning involves having your crew ready to respond if a crisis type event ever does happen.  A well executed fire drill or a man overboard drill are examples of crisis planning.  Has your crew recently discussed the "Vessel Emergency Response Procedures" section of the Higman Policy and Procedures Manual? This is a good place to start.

Incident response - Once a crisis starts, your crew's response should be part of a process you have already rehearsed or discussed. An incident response is the automatic process that is in place to initially respond to the incident.  Your boat's Emergency Station Bill is an example of an automatic response.  It should be well understood by all crewmembers with no hesitation or confusion on who does what if the time ever comes.

Incident management - Once into the response, your crew will need to make critical plans on scene with the help of shore management as the situation unfolds.  After the initial response, strategic planning must take place to help the crisis come to an end.  In this stage, the Captain should be in discussion with his crew and shore support to best understand the situation and to best decide on the next step.  Throughout the incident, the logbook should be kept up to record the response.

Continuation of normal activity - Though a crisis may be underway, the boat still needs to operate.  Especially if a response is prolonged, there needs to be regular activity onboard to keep the show running.  The engine room must still be checked, dinner must be made and plans should be put in place to ensure the crew gets proper rest.

Command and Control. - It is important that the crisis response is unified and centralized.  The Captain takes the on-scene role as the initial incident commander. Defined actions must come from the Captain.  Communications with all crewmembers must remain clear and open at all times.  At all times, crewmembers need to relay their activities to the Captain so he will have a clear picture of the unfolding events.  This will allow him to make informed decisions throughout the response.

Troubleshooting engine problems.

The smoke signal is one of the oldest forms of communication in recorded history.   North American Indian tribes could send a message over a far distance by forming shapes with smoke rising from a smoldering fire. 

Are there smoke signals in towboating?  You bet there is; the smoke from the stack of your boat's engines can tell a story and often times becomes step one in trouble shooting a problem.

With your engine running, the color and thickness of smoke emitting from the stack will tell you what is wrong and what may go wrong in the near future. 

All diesel engines emit a little bit of black smoke when accelerating.  This is normal.  It takes sometime for the engine system to develop the RPM and necessary power to use all the fuel that is being feed through the injectors!  This is not a smoky diesel engine.  If there is a 'lot' of black - or other colored - smoke during acceleration, then there may be a problem that needs work. 

Detailed information to help interpret your engines smoke signals can be found in the Cummins Operatition and Maintenance Manual:

Excessive Black Smoke

Black smoke is the most common smoke emitted from diesel engines.  It indicates poor and incomplete combustion of the diesel fuel.  Follow these checks to isolate the problem:

1. Air intake system is restricted.....Check the air filters; are they clean, replace if necessary.  Check the inlet piping for possible restrictions.
2. Fuel quality is poor....Check the specs on fuel recently taken onboard.
3. Injector Timing off....The repair dept can initiate the overhead set procedure for injector timing.
4. Bad injector......Replace bad injector.
5. Air intake leak between the turbo and the cylinder head....check for air leaks.
6. Load on the engine is excessive....in a Towboat case, this would indicate that the wheels were set with the wrong pitch, requiring too much horse power to run at rated rpm.
7. After checking all the previous, the Repair Department would contact Cummins for further troubleshooting. 

The fourth quarter CBT has been released! At this time we have two courses available:

Proper Look-Out

Safe Food Handling

We will be adding Fuel Transfer Procedures by November 1, 2011.

With the release of the fourth quarter we have reach the 4000th Certificate. Todd Turner on the M/V Aberdeen will receive a $150 gift certificate to Wal-Mart.

Congratulations Todd!

Thank you for keeping up with your training.

Higman welcomes Cristine Bohacek to the Houston Office.  Cristine will be working in accounting, including processing travel vouchers and payroll.

Cristine came to Higman from the wonderful PapPas Restaurants.  She found things are surprisingly similar, "Everything is constantly changing". 

While working at Higman, Crisitne is attending University of Houston for an MBA in Global Finance. 

On her time off she enjoys playing with her Miniature Dachshunds.

Last Call for the 2012 Higman Calendar

We are still accepting pictures for the 2012 Calendar.  The deadline is November 1, 2011.  We have received several wonderful submissions this month and hope to get many more.

Please send your pictures to Kayla (kaylam@higman.com).  With your picture please include your name and the location where the picture was taken.

Much of the time we take for granted that our shipmates follow procedure.  We don't give it a second thought after checking things and finding out that "all is well".  Sometimes, though, we don't follow procedure, or we slip up and forget something.  Sometimes we get annoyed that the Captain is always nagging us to make sure certain tasks are done.  I can tell you from experience, that nagging is always for our own good.  Performing the slightest, most mundane task can quickly become the one thing that saved your life.

On July 14th of this year, onboard the Miss Marianne as Relief Captain, I had just taken the watch from our Pilot, Brandon Maurer.  It was a few minutes past 1700 and we were on "A" dock at Sun Oil, Nederland, loading vapor recovery, high H2S crude.  A rare rain storm had rolled in to the area about 30 minutes earlier and the shore tankermen, provided by Accutrans, had shut down the transfer and secured the barges when lightning was spotted in the area.

Blown up Vent cap!

With that information, I headed down to the galley to get a cup of coffee, while Brandon remained up in the wheelhouse to take care of some personal matters.  At 1710, a few minutes after I got down to the galley, a loud crash of thunder was heard, followed by the sounding of the General Alarm and the Air Horn.

Brandon piped down to the galley that the barge had caught fire.  Both vessel tankermen, Eric Bell, Sr ("Easy") and Chuck McClure, quickly got their work vests on and grabbed handheld radios, while I began making my way up to the wheelhouse.

That rare, but welcomed rain storm had caused an even rarer occurrence.  Lightning struck the vapor vent stack on the MMI 3029, blowing out a 15" section of the vent cover, bypassing the flame screen.  Vapors and residual product that had built up over the year in the stack ignited. 

Under direction, Chuck and "Easy" checked the valves in the vent stack and along the pipeline to make sure that everything was shut, which it had been (the vapor stack for the transfer being done under vapor recovery, and the tanks and headers when the transfer was shut down).  The Accutrans Tankermen made their way to the fire with the barge extinguishers and the flames were extinguished.

Thankfully, the vent stack valve was closed.  Had someone not taken the time to follow procedure, it is possible that the flames could have travelled down the pipeline and caused more damage than the simple lightning strike did.

Tankermen, make sure that if you have to shut down due to weather that everything is closed off correctly. If you shut down just as you see lightning, then you have enough time to make sure all valves are closed and everything is secured before seeking safe shelter. If you wait too long, the results can be catastrophic.

We got lucky on the Miss Marianne.  By design, our load was vapor recovery.  If that had been a black-oil, open hatch load, would the vapor stack have been open during the load?  Would someone have remembered to close the vent stack valve in this situation?  Make sure you and your crew know what to do in the event of bad weather.

 Be safe out there!...Capt Brian Brown