WHAT IF…

You are the master of a vessel. Due to an unknown reason, a container on board has begun to leak, and a crew member informs you of the incident. There is not much information about the incident, yet, or the HNS in question. What is the first thing that you do?

Sometimes you are facing a lot of unprotected and / or injured contaminated persons (e.g., passengers of a ferry) in the initial phase of the rescue action, before you have clear and detailed information about the HNS involved. As a result, you have to deal with mass decontamination, while not knowing what is the right decontamination method or decontamination agent. For example water, as the standard decontamination agent, could react heavily with the contaminant. What would you do in this situation?