3 Dec 2023
This week's edition of our safety blog is covering the topic of emergency preparedness, why it is so important and how we can go about doing this.
Weekly Blog- Emergency Preparedness
This week we look into the topic of being prepared for emergency scenarios that may occur on board. We’ll be looking into why it is so important that you are prepared for the worst and how you can go about preparing for it.
Why is it so important to prepare?
Emergency situations are high stress environments and we usually have very little to no experience of what to do in them. They usually happen at the most unexpected times and often require the full attention of the vessel’s crew to stop the situation from deteriorating any further. High stress environments sometimes lead to the breakdown of rational thinking and decision making can be impeded and delayed due to this clouding of a person’s regular judgement. Due to this, it is imperative that we ‘pre-plan’ some of the decision making that this person may need to do, to ease the mental load in a real life situation. This is where preparing for an emergency scenario comes in.
How can we prepare for the worst case scenario?
The first thing that we suggest at Sail Safer, is to first, think of all of the different emergency scenarios that you can think of. From this, begin to produce a range of checklists of things to be done for each of these emergency scenarios. By doing this we take away some of the mental burden caused by decision making in an emergency situation as we have pre-planned it ahead of time. A checklist is not their to replace the initial actions taken instinctively by trained crew members but instead is there to supplement it when they begin to draw a blank and provide more information after they have exhausted their mental of list of what to do next. Another thing that we can do to prepare is to produce a list of emergency contacts ahead of time. This is especially useful if you sometimes have temporary staff working on your boat who may not have the shoreside contact details already saved to their phone.
If you have any questions on this week's topic then leave a comment below
If you are interested in contracting our services for producing your emergency procedures and if you would like more information on this please see our website: sailsafer.co.uk/emergencyprocedures
If you are interested in taking the plunge and using our services or want further information please contact us on info@sailsafer.co.uk or +447835598705