Pallas (ship, 1971)
 The Pallas with the Dutch rescue platform Barbara
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The Pallas was a cargo ship flying the flag of the Bahamas , which ran aground off the Schleswig-Holstein North Sea coast near the island of Amrum four days later as a result of a fire that broke out on board on October 25, 1998 . The inadequacies in the coordination of various security forces and inadequate security regulations in ecologically sensitive sea areas, which were later discovered, led to extensive political investigations and the establishment of the emergency command .
Average
At the time of the accident , the ship was transporting packages of sawn timber that had been loaded five days earlier in Hudiksvall near Stockholm in the direction of Casablanca . Wood was additionally stowed on the hatches on deck , which was secured with wires and chains to prevent it from going overboard.
On the afternoon of 25 October 1998, the Pallas was in heavy weather southwest of the Danish city of Esbjerg when the master noticed billows of smoke on deck. Although the source between the overflowing water, spray and pouring rain could not be precisely identified, the captain suspected that the plumes of smoke might have come from the hold. The second officer, who was sent forward to check, could not find anything in the storm and rain and assumed that the master had seen steam from the ventilation system. However, to be on the safe side, the captain had the power to the forecastle cut off as he suspected a short circuit in the electrical system. But it continued to smoke.
As a precaution, the captain alerted the Danish coast guard and the sea rescue in Aarhus , which in turn put a naval helicopter and a rescue cruiser on alert. The captain ordered the crew to put on survival suits and prepare for a possible evacuation and to assemble on the quarterdeck . The first officer issued the nautical books and passports to the crew.
At that time, the Pallas was heading south about 20 nautical miles off the Danish coast. In the evening bright flames broke out from the deck cargo. It was thus certain that the timber load was on fire. The Danish coast guard was informed about this at around 7 p.m. The captain was now heading for the coast from the wind. On the one hand, he wanted to get closer to the coast in order to facilitate a rescue from the air that might be necessary, on the other hand, he wanted to prevent the fire from spreading to the quarterdeck with an aft wind . As an additional measure, he had carbon dioxide channeled into the hold to smother the fire. This measure was initially successful, but the storm kindled the fire again and again. At midnight the master had the wires and chains of the deck cargo cut and laid the ship across the wind so that the oncoming waves of water washed the deck cargo overboard. When the fire in the holds had reached the deckhouse, the captain gave up the ship and made a Mayday saying. "Mayday, mayday, motorvessel Pallas, C6LO9, fire on deck, 17 persons on board, request immediate assistance in position twenty nautical miles west of Esbjerg" .
The crew was then rescued, with the Filipino chef suffering a fatal heart attack. Various attempts to tow the ship out into the open sea failed. The multi-purpose ship Mellum was able to establish a tow connection to the Pallas , but it later broke.
Effects
The ship drifted into the area of the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park and ran aground off Amrum on October 29 . It lost around 244 tons of bunkered oil, which, due to the harsh weather conditions, reached the sea largely unhindered and later drifted into a bird sanctuary. A total of around 12,000 seabirds, mainly eiders , and several dozen seals were affected by the oil. On November 12, two weeks later, the weather had calmed down so that the pumping of the oil from the wreck could begin. The smoldering fire on the cargo could not be completely extinguished until one month after it broke out. Parts of the wreck of the Pallas are still in front of Amrum and are visible at low tide .
The procedure after the Pallas disaster was the subject of controversial public debate and became very politically explosive. Several investigative commissions and the Maritime Administration tried to clarify the often controversial information on the course and extent of the accident. After the accident, intensive discussions began about the safety of shipping in the North Sea and other waters. The lack of coordination of the security forces was criticized as well as the generally inadequate security guidelines, especially for shipping in the sensitive ecosystem of the Wadden Sea . Public and expert opinions indicated that the provisions of the Basic Law on responsibilities in disaster control at sea had an aggravating effect on the coordination of the relief effort.
It was not least this accident that led to the establishment of the average command .
See also
literature
- Lars Clausen : Weak point analysis on the occasion of the PALLAS accident. Federal Office of Administration - Central Office for Civil Protection, Bonn 2003, ISSN 0343-5164 (with a sub- expert opinion on maritime law by Doris König )
- Ines Link u. a .: Run aground. KFS Publication 10, Disaster Research Center of Christian Albrechts University, Kiel 2000
- Jan Mordhorst: Average . Dramatic ship accidents. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-7822-0747-5 .
- Tim Schwabedissen: Stranded . Ship accidents off the North Sea coast. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-7822-0893-5 .
Web links
- Final report of the inquiry committee Pallas of the Landtag Schleswig-Holstein on Landtag printed matter 14/2650 from January 18, 2000 (pdf; 28.8 MB)
- Independent expert commission »Pallas Average«. (PDF; 1.6 MB) Expert commission "Pallas average", February 16, 2000, accessed on August 26, 2015 .
- uni-kiel.de - Kiel University, weak point analysis of the disaster research center (PDF; 625 kB)
- bundestag.de - small request in the Bundestag on the "Security and Emergency Concept for the North and Baltic Seas" (PDF; 51 kB)
- spiegel.de - Image of the burning ship
- shz dossier: 10 years after the Pallas accident
Footnotes
- ^ Bettina Reineking: The Pallas Accident . In: Wattenmeersekretariat (Ed.): Wadden Sea Newsletter . No. 1 , 1999, p. 22–25 ( online (PDF; 195 kB)).