What if a Cruise Ship Wrecked in Alaska?

When the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia foundered near shore in the Mediterranean, at least 16 people died, but most of the 4000-plus passengers and crew survived. Yet what if the accident had occurred in remote, harsh, Arctic waters, where thousands of vacationers travel on cruise ships each year? According to the United States Coast Guard, the worst-case scenario could be a shipwreck off the northern or western coast of Alaska, where the water is cold, help is hundreds of miles away, and just making it to shore would be no guarantee of survival. Here are four facts to know.

It?s Getting Crowded

Maritime traffic in the narrow Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia is increasing quickly thanks to melting ice and growing economic opportunities. Rear Adm. Thomas P. Ostebo, who commands Coast Guard operations in Alaska, estimates that the summer of 2012 will see 1000 ship transits, up from a few hundred per summer in recent years. The traffic increases the risks of collisions and groundings for both commercial and tourism operations.

Commercial shipping is increasing along the Northern Sea Route across the top of Russia. Norwegian vessels, for instance, are starting to use that route to carry liquid natural gas to ports in the Far East. (Shipping through the Northwest Passage above Canada is growing more slowly.) Cruise ships still make up a small percentage of Arctic ship traffic. Despite the uptick, however, international organizations haven?t established a vessel separation scheme, with lanes for northbound and southbound traffic, let alone a sophisticated system for tracking ships through the strait. "We?re moving from a low-probability, high-consequence potential for a mass rescue event, to something that?s more likely to happen," Ostebo says.

But No One Knows How Crowded

Ship operators off the northern and western coasts of Alaska don?t need to check in with U.S. officials. They don?t report their presence, the size of their vessels or the cargo they?re carrying, their self-rescue capabilities, or their destinations. "We?ve been surprised time and time again," Ostebo says. Last August, he arrived in Barrow, on the North Slope, only to learn that two days earlier a German cruise ship with several hundred passengers had anchored offshore and brought tourists to town on boats. Coast Guard officials had thought all cruise ship activity was ended for the season. "We were going ?What?!?" Ostebo says. "I get asked a lot by small native communities up there, ?How do we know who these people are? What are the customs and immigration controls??"

In an Accident, Help Is Far Away

In 2010, the MV Clipper Adventurer cruise ship ran aground in the Canadian Arctic in calm seas and clear weather. Those are ideal conditions for a rescue, yet it was two days before the Canadian Coast Guard?s Amundsen icebreaker arrived on the scene to remove passengers. If a cruise ship foundered near Point Hope on the northwest coast of Alaska, it would take a Coast Guard cutter patrolling the Bering Sea near St. Paul Island about two days to arrive on the scene, assuming a best-case speed of nearly 30 knots. Other U.S. military vessels might be closer, and the United States has strong working relationships with Canadian and Russian search-and-rescue operations, but help would almost certainly be many hours, if not days, away. If the ship were sinking and there were injuries, a crisis could escalate quickly to a catastrophe.

Getting Off a Sinking Ship Is Just the Start

Once most of the passengers from the Costa Concordia reached lifeboats or the shore, their ordeal ended quickly: Buses, hospitals, roads, professional first responders, and good Samaritans were all on hand to help. It wouldn?t be that way if 500 tourists found themselves in a disabled ship off Point Hope, Alaska. No U.S. Coast Guard cutter has the capacity to sail away with that many passengers. Rescuers would have to slowly ferry them to land and then set up an airlift, probably using C-130 Hercules aircraft from Kodiak station 800 miles to the southeast. Once that airlift was completed, the final challenge would be removing fuel and other environmentally dangerous materials from the ship and coming up with a salvage plan.

Those operations are still ongoing off the coast of Giglio, the Tuscan island where the Costa Concordia ran aground, and they?ll continue for weeks. In the remote and wild waters of the Arctic Ocean, the hurdles would be much larger.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/extreme-machines/what-if-a-cruise-ship-wrecked-in-alaska-6645471?src=rss

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