Lessons Learned: A Night to Remember

First published in 1955,?A Night to Remember?remains a completely riveting account of the?Titanic's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain

Available for the first time in trade paperback and with a new introduction for the 50th anniversary edition by Nathaniel Phil-brick, author of?In the Heart of the Sea?and?Sea of Glory, Walter Lord's classic minute-by-minute re-creation is as vivid now as it was upon first publication fifty years ago. From the initial distress flares to the struggles of those left adrift for hours in freezing waters, this semicentennial edition brings that moonlit night in 1912 to life for a new generation of readers..        

The Titanic was heralded as "Unsinkable", and it can only be called ironic that it sunk on it's very first voyage. Although ships had sunk before, because of the unsinkable claims of The Titanic, it wasn't as prepared for that possibility as it should have been. Unfortunately, hundreds of people died from the sinking of The Titanic, and although it's fairly common knowledge that the ship didn't have enough lifeboats for all of the passengers, I did not realize just how many of the lifeboats that did make it off the boat were only half full or how many lifeboats were never used at all. The Titanic, like most emergencies, brought about a whole new series of regulations to ensure that this kind of incident does not happen again.

Some lessons learned from A Night to Remember:

Have a plan to save everybody – When the Titanic sunk, it had 20 lifeboats on it, able to hold a total of 1,178 people, less than 50% of the total capacity of the ship of 3,300. On the day it sunk, it had 2,240 individuals on board, meaning over 1,000 passengers wouldn’t have fit on the lifeboats. In addition to not having space for all of the passengers in the lifeboats, the location and plan for loading the boats favored 1st class passengers and gave no access to 3rd class passengers. As a result, a number of lifeboats were dropped from the ship less than full because they didn’t see any remaining passengers needing rescue, mainly because a large number of passengers couldn’t access the lifeboat loading areas. And although crew were assigned to a variety of muster stations to support evacuation, nearly none were assigned to support the 3rd class areas or population. Obviously since the sinking of titanic, a lot of changed, and now there is more of a focus on ensuring that disaster/emergency response has specific plans for those most vulnerable populations.?

Consider your timeline for response – When the ship first hit the iceberg, assessment teams began gathering information on the extent of the damage. They tried to predict how long they had before the ship sank to determine how long they had for evacuation. Initially, they took the time to assess the damage and the rate that the ship was taking on water, but then didn’t share that information with those loading the boats. So, in a rush, many boats were sent out with open seats because they felt the rush to get the boats away before the ship sank, but they later discovered that they had a significant amount of time to ensure that the boats were filled before releasing them. Others weren’t in a rush and didn’t worry about trying to evacuate until it was too late. Because nobody really shared the timeline and how long they had, a number of mistakes were made that affected how many were saved.

Stay up to date on emergency response practices – When the radio operators first were made aware of the sinking ship, they send out a “CQD” distress call, which was the local emergency signal created by the Marconi Wireless Company. Which means that only certain boats would have understood the meaning of the distress call. But the international boating community recently officially adopted the “SOS” distress call, and an operator on the Titanic was reminded of this and switched to the new international distress signal, receiving more response and assistance from other nearby ships. Emergency Response procedures, processes and terminology change regularly and it’s important that those in the industry keep up with the changes, both to be able to communicate needs to others and understand needs from others.

Respect emergency procedures and chain of command – When many of the ship’s crew felt the ship hit something and the engines stopped, they immediately knew that something was wrong. But, on a ship that was 882 feet long, 92 feet wide and 11 floors, with no modern radios or intercom systems, locating people on the ship and getting or giving instructions can be difficult. So, the pre-established procedures were that if you were on-duty, you immediately reported to your work location. If you weren’t on-duty, you reported to your quarters so that you could be found if needed. Many of the crew wanted to go investigate but knew that the procedures were to wait in their rooms, and when ship command knew that they would be evacuating, they went to the crew quarters and started assigning tasks because they knew where they could find the crew. For the next several hours, the crew followed pre-written emergency procedures and then responded to instructions from their ships command when the emergency procedures no longer worked. Because the ship was designated “unsinkable,” many of the emergency procedures weren’t adequate for a full evacuation of the ship which caused the ships command to have to use experience to support the evacuation.?

Although those in Emergency Management have gotten away from saying that anything is "unsinkable" or indestructible, or even that it cannot fail, we have to put a lot of faith in our equipment, systems and people ... and then we build backups to any of those critical things. Although the crew of The Titanic did what they could to save people, there was so much more they could have done with additional training, preplanning and organization. Thus why Emergency Management as a field exists, to try to plan for the "unsinkable" to ensure that nobody gets left behind.