On the 8th morning of September, “the 2015 Joint Search-and-Rescue(S&R) Exercise of Large Scale Passenger Ship” which was co-hosted by China Transport Ministry and Shandong Province Government, and undertook by the Maritime S&R Center of Shandong and Yantai city was held in the north sea area of Yantai. Mr.He Jianzhong, the vice minister of Transport Ministry and the director of China Maritime S&R Center commanded this exercise together with Mr.Wang Shujian, the vice governor of Shandong Provincial government and the director of Shandong Maritime S&R Center.
With the theme of “safety of passenger traffic and sea area”, the exercise included 12 S&R centers and 6 parts such as ship self-rescue by outfire, coordinative command of maritime S&R, passenger evacuation, mass retreat, air-sea-land trinity S&R and S&R exhibitions. Totally 22 ships, 2 professional rescue helicopters, 2 ambulances and 925 staff took part into the exercise. 429 passengers and 83 seamen in the exercise were all rescued.
As nowadays there are many large-scale ship incidents at home and abroad, the exercise tried to improve the maritime S&R ability by doing such reality-imitating practices. The overall process evaluation through multi-bureaus and air-sea-land parts was held for the first time in China. In addition, the passenger ship evacuation system on the sea, which hadn’t been used before was applied to achieve the mass retreat in the exercise. Furthermore, the exercise had a specific point to imitate the reality and manifest the concept of “sea-friendly and life- kindly”, examined the feasibility of mass retreat at sea and improved the coordinative ability of different bureaus.