Monday Accident & Lessons Learned: Industry Introduces Two New Safety Initiatives After Costa Concordia Accident

CNN reports that the cruise ship industry has announced two new safety policies in the wake of the Costa Concordia accident.

The first measure is to have a list of the passengers and their nationality stored ashore to be available to rescue teams.

The second measure has to do with passenger briefings and has 12 specific emergency instructions that must be reviewed with all passengers. These 12 items are:

1. When and how to don a life jacket.

2. Description of emergency signals and appropriate responses in the event of an emergency.

3. Location of life jackets.

4. Where to muster when the emergency signal is sounded.

5. The method of accounting for passenger attendance at musters both for training and in the event of an actual emergency.

6. How information will be provided in an emergency.

7. What to expect if the master orders an evacuation of the ship.

8. What additional safety information is available.

9. Information on whether passengers should return to cabins prior to mustering, including specifics regarding medications, clothing, and life jackets.

10. Description of key safety systems and features.

11. Emergency routing systems and how to recognize emergency exits.

12. Who to seek out for additional information.

While both of these measures provide potentially useful information, neither addresses keeping a ship from running aground in the first place. It will be interesting to see what corrective actions are put in place to deal with the root causes of the grounding.