boomerangben
Well-known member
As I understand it, Falmouth hasn’t been involved for nearly 10 years. It’s all handled at the NMOC in Fareham. Maybe the satellite ground station is in Norway. I don’t know
Posts crossed
Help Bob. - Summoning help from the water.
- Thread starter Mark-1
- Start date
Posts crossed
mjcoon
Well-known member
Oh, yes, the media would flock to write contradictory accounts... ;-)
capnsensible
Well-known member
According to this thread there is only one account, generally wrong, and all the rest of the press copies it....
boomerangben
Well-known member
That’s is why if you perceive an emergency, you report it. If channel 16 not being used, it is fair to assume that it hasn’t been reported. If when you do call and they say thank you they know, then no problem. If they say thank you yes we will investigate and a life is saved then your call wasn’t in vain. There are few things worse than being called to an incident that has become a tragedy because the call came too late
capnsensible
Well-known member
That's exactly the same advice I got from an SAR pilot i knew decades ago. Thanks for confirming that. He was based at Lee on Solent and owned a yacht kept next to mine in HMS Dolphin boat pool. Top bloke, gave lots of tips about how things work.
Mark-1
Well-known member
Yup, but in a busy area few people do.
Apparently it's called the Bystander Effect and the relevance to this thread is that 'Bob' reckons that's part of the drawback of the AIS SART.
Daydream believer
Well-known member
ylop
Well-known member
That's an aspiration rather than necessarily the reality. This might come across as criticising the response times - I'm really not, I just want people to understand that there are steps they follow, which take time before anyone gets mobilised in most cases. If hypothetical Bob in the OP is assuming that his PLB is the fastest way to get help he may well be wrong.
With a recently downloaded almanac and a good sight of the sky it certainly should. If you are bobbing in the sea trying to hold it upright it may take longer. But "a couple of minutes" is not as instant as people think.
The system may well have improved since the fax machine was part of the process. It still involves human beings receiving a message and deciding where to pass it? That is not instantanteous. That is my point. People assume this is like sending a whats app and almost as soon as you release the red button some lights are flashing in the local MRCC and people there are jumping into action.
But again thats another couple of minutes
But with no other source of information to justify bypassing the DLA, the norm for an unsubstantiated PLB is that the CG call the DLA. That IS a further delay. In my opinion a perfectly justifiable one.
I've not disputed that. A mayday call by voice or DSC may be faster. I'm not knocking the system - but people should be clear there is a time delay between hitting the button and you guys hitting the water. Its a good reason for acting early - potentially as soon as you see fire rather than once you've decided you need to abandon ship. You can always call and stand them down when things are under control.
It is possible that those issues have all been solved. I suspect it is more a case of better than it was, rather than solved.
I've not looked for a very long time but I think the pay was pretty atrocious - less than other emergency service call handlers; less than customer service call handlers who work more sociable hours.
This is an extreme example - it is from 2017 so its possible the issues have been fixed, although the report itself didn't criticise the fundamentals of how the system was supposed to work:
Sinking of vivier creel boat Louisa with loss of 3 lives
02:32 Satellite detects distress beacon, passed to France who automatically forward to UKMCC
02:39 UKMCC pass to Falmouth CG by Fax and Phone (7 minutes)
02:44 UKMCC add position information (+5 minutes = 12 minutes)
02:50 UKMCC hand over control to CG. (not clear if that adds any delay)
02:51 Fal CG contact Stornoway CG and ask to try contacting (+7 minutes = 19 minutes)
03:15 Fal CG officially handover control to S/way CG having confirmed location (+24 minutes = 33 minutes)
03:22 S/way CG page lifeboat DLA (+7 minutes = 40 minutes)
03:27 S/way CG ask ARCC for a helo (+5 minutes = 45 minutes)
ARCC ask S/Way to page the helo crew (time not stated)
DLA calls CG and authorises immediate launch of ALB (time not stated)
03:33 L/Boat crew paged (+11 minutes = 51 minutes)
03:40 ALB launches (+7 minutes = 58 minutes)
03:44 noted there had been a delay with actually paging the helo crew due to a fault.
There were issues with certainty about the position accuracy, but even once the local CG MRCC knew exactly where to task help it took 18 minutes to page the lifeboat crew.
Another example with a happier outcome, but considerably less detail as a result:
Capsize and sinking of fishing vessel Crig-A-Tana
73 minutes from EPIRB to Rescue. There is a lifeboat station about 6NM from the casualty and an EPIRB position so presumbably most of that time was not actually spent travelling to the scene and searching (this report says they saw a read flare as they approached the scene MAIB launches investigation into the capsize and loss of FV Crig-A-Tana). You can piece together the timeline yourself: https://rnli.org/news-and-media/202...at-launches-to-assist-cadgwith-fishing-vessel says crew paged 12:33. The MAIB report says capsized 12:07 - so that is 26 minutes from EPIRB to automatically activating until lifeboat crew paged. This was only about 18 months ago so unless the systems have been radically improved very recently this seems likely to be representative - and the report doesn't question the timelines so they obviously weren't considered unusually long.
This case doesn't involve an EPIRB (and frankly the distress reporting was pretty poor all round) - but it gives an idea of how many things are happening, people need to give the OK, information needs to be collated etc during an emergency: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6579bc3d095987001295e008/2023-10-Seadogz-Report.pdf. Collision at 10:11. Ferry bridge team reported to VTS 10:12. Skipper phones his boss 10:16. Other vessels on scene call CG on Ch16 10:18. 10:24 One of those vessels says taking casualties to marine. 10:26 CG task lifeboat that is already afloat to assist (6 minutes after first call to them, 12 minutes after first call to VTS!). 10:35 CG call ambulance service!
Daydream believer
Well-known member
Then factor in the 6.5 hour wait for the ambulance.
Mark-1
Well-known member
Yeah. I'm sure it's obvious to YBW posters but rough knowledge of timing of the process used to weed out the (96%?) false alarm informs critical decisions that could save our lives or kill us.
If that process happens after the launch then Bob probably wouldn't have bothered too much about having two way comms on his person because it has limited impact on his rescue time. He wouldn't even need to register the PLB because the launch will take place before they bother to look for his contacts.
In fact the launch takes place after a process to work out what's going on. (Which common sense tells us necessary because otherwise the vast majority of helicopter launches would be false alarms and it would never be available for real calls.) Given that, Bob was right to carry two way comms so he can (hopefully) speed that process up. The PLB can give his position, but if he's carrying his phone/VHF there won't need to be a process of calling his contacts, they'll know he needs help probably before the CG hear from the PLB but certainly shortly afterwards.
Also the first thing the CG are going to do is call his VHF/mobile. So if, like me, he has a simple button phone with a different sim to use in an aquapac he can help himself by ensuring that number is the one he's given as his number for the PLB. It turns out the number they need is not "his number" but the number of the phone that's likely to be in his pocket when out on the water. That would.be irrelevant if the launch came before the phone around. It's actually critical.
Last edited:
fisherman
Well-known member
More to this one than meets the eye. I will be careful and say everything here has 'allegedly' before it, but I was there on the day.
The epirb fired. Sadly the owner had not changed the owner details so the CG started ringing the previous owner on Scilly, and the Scilly HM. The previous owner rang the skipper's mum, who rang his dad, who rang another boat working nearby. The boat could easily have left Scilly that morning and arrived at the epirb position. The other boat had left the casualty vessel an hour before, and he set off back out, and tried to persuade the CG to launch the LB, pointing out that there was an epirb hit, the boat had vanished from the AIS and the crew were not answering phones. In the end the LB crew, already mustered at the station, because the word had got round, launched themselves, as the casualty crew were LB crewmembers. When the preliminary MAIB report appeared it said 'with particular regard to the emergency services response' and a month later those words had disappeared, and no mention of that timeline in the report. The red flare was from the liferaft a mile from scene.
Roberto
Well-known member
Robert Redford was saved shortly after having set his liferaft on fire; mind you, he also whispered into horses ears, had a love affair with Meryl Streep and contributed to Nixon fall, perhaps a bit ambitious to take him as an example
Iliade
Well-known member
Slightly o/t, but in the Indian Himalaya we (or rather my mate, the designated rescue coordinator) got the data from an activated PLB about 24 hours after the incident. Fortunately the Dutch pilot had a. been spotted, and b. been carrying an InReach or a SPOT, I forget which, so he had been recovered by then.
Mark-1
Well-known member
https://rnli.org/news-and-media/202...at-launches-to-assist-cadgwith-fishing-vessel
"The Falmouth Coastguard was alerted via an effective EPIRB signal. "
"The Falmouth Coastguard was alerted via an effective EPIRB signal. "
Juan Twothree
Well-known member
https://rnli.org/news-and-media/202...at-launches-to-assist-cadgwith-fishing-vessel
"The Falmouth Coastguard was alerted via an effective EPIRB signal. "
Most of the time, the JRCC at Fareham receives the satellite alerts from the ground station, and then pings them off to the relevant MRCC. However occasionally Falmouth covers that role, depending on staffing levels at Fareham, and for resilience purposes.
dancrane
Well-known member
ylop
Well-known member
https://rnli.org/news-and-media/202...at-launches-to-assist-cadgwith-fishing-vessel
"The Falmouth Coastguard was alerted via an effective EPIRB signal. "
Is Falmouth not the correct MRCC for an incident off Lizard anyway? So even if JRCC received it - they would pass to Falmouth who would pass to the local rescue assets?
Juan Twothree
Well-known member
Absolutely correct.
boomerangben
Well-known member
So you are aware of Bystander Effect, you know there is lesser chance of the alarm so you chose to become victim to a known effect and not raise the alarm??
RunAgroundHard
Well-known member
Apparently the 1965 theory of the "Bystander Effect" is now questionable and in a group of people, someone will likely respond to help. The challenge is based on recent work and used surveillance video to establish a trend.
Wayback Machine
Bob is okay with his AIS SART.
