The News Tribune and the Olympian report that the new protocol requires screening the records of all the containers aboard a ship several days in advance of its arrival. All containers that have moved through Vietnam this year are subject to close inspection of their records. And units that have undergone maintenance there get an even closer look.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and shipping lines have agreed on a procedure coast-wide to screen out those containers after three workers in Vietnam and Brazil lost their lives this year from explosions in the containers’ refrigeration units.
Scott Mason, president of Tacoma’s Longshore Local 23, said those new procedures call for special handling of those suspect units and quarantining them in an isolated part of the container terminals until further tests can be done.
“We don’t want to alarm the public, but we’re taking precautions to ensure that none of these containers ever get out on the road,” said Mason.