Looking at the NTSB and potential career opportunities therein

So, after reading the Cosco Busan report, I found myself investigating the NTSB. There were questions I wanted answered. Who works there? How did they get to that place? What training and background did they have?

In general, I found that the staff comes from three main sources. There are human performance investigators that come from academia, structural and other engineers that come from professional and academic backgrounds, and operational experts that come from the industry in question, be it aviation, rail, road, or marine.

Looking around the web, I wasn't able to find a ton of information about the marine staff at NTSB. I was able to find an account from 2003, written by the current Senior Human Performance Investigator at NTSB of how he got the job there. I have linked to it below.

Trying to step out of the trap of constant googling, I tried calling the Seattle branch office of the NTSB. Though they appear to be an aviation branch, I hoped that I could finagle a short informational interview. As of now, no such luck.

Through my research, I began to realize that getting a job at the NTSB would be akin to trying to get a job as an astronaut. It might be a good final goal, but the real meat and potatoes of the career would be the long(ish?) journey there... This in mind, I began to broaden my search, looking for the smaller players in the field, the intermediate steps, the places people use and develop the same investigatory skills--just in less high profile cases.

My next few posts will cover my research into those smaller players: USCG investigators, insurance claims adjusters, marine surveyors, maritime lawyers, etc.

DOCUMENTS AND LINKS

• William Bramble, Human Performance Investigator at the NTSB discusses his career path.
• NTSB Job Openings via USAJOBS
• Aviation Accident Investigator Job Description via avjobs.com

ADDITIONAL READING

•  Major marine collisions and effects of preventive recommendations written by the NTSB.

Cosco Busan and Me

This whole obsession started when my mom sent me a copy, well, emailed me a link to a pdf of the NTSB report on the 2007 Cosco Busan allision. For those who don't know, the Cosco Busan was a Hong Kong flagged container ship that allided with the Delta tower of the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge in November of 2007. The ship's hull suffered a 200 foot long gash that pierced two fuel tanks and allowed 52,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil (known officially as IFO-380, and unofficially as bunker oil) to spill out into the San Francisco Bay.

At the time of the spill I was working in San Francisco as a deckhand for a passenger ferry and tour boat company. The actual week of the accident I was attending a linguistics conference in Mexico, but my coworkers on the Oakland-Alameda Ferry Encinal were some of the first to report the extent of the fuel in the water.

When I got back to town, there was a lot of talk in SF about what had happened, who was at fault, etc. A lot of people were ready to blame the pilot, some felt that the shipping management company should shoulder the responsibility. When I got my hands on the NTSB report, it was a relief to finally get a full, well researched investigation into what happened. The transcripts were there, the timelines, the drug test results. Nothing was summarized into half-true sound bites for the local news.

I was impressed. The report didn't set out to crucify anyone. It looked at a lot of different angles, it was intelligent, thorough, and obviously written by people with deep experience in the maritime world. Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised, maybe this seems obvious to some people. But to me, it was a revelation to find a government agency looking for genuine answers, and looking for them outside of a blaming or criminalizing framework.

Hey, I'm sure the NTSB has its political struggles, but in this report I saw a glimmer of a agency that might actually be true to its mission. And not only that, but true to a mission that I find profoundly interesting. Marine safety and marine accident investigation are near and dear to me. Not just as a maritime professional, but also as someone who wants to know how things go wrong, and why.

DOCUMENTS

• NTSB Report on the Cosco Busan Allision
• USCG Report of Investigation into Cosco Busan Allision
• BoatingSF Animantion of Cosco Busan Allision (using AIS data)

SUGGESTED READING

• Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the edge of technology by James Chiles