Thank you for your response PJ2.
From my experiences, 95% of DG trained staff are very competent, and well trained. Unfortunately this appears to be getting less and less so. Once again money is the problem, companies are looking to pay minimum wage staff to do non-minimum wage jobs.
I spent quite some time at a very Big Airline, and their attention to DG was excellent, staff paid well, training was spot on, and procedures almost watertight (double signed checksheets etc). I would be happy to fly on an aircraft with freight checked by just one member of their old staff, never mind two, safety was paramount, not cost.
However, recently the cheap option has been the choice for most UK handling firms. Young kids on 13k a year checking RADAC etc with just bare-minimum training, supervision and motivation. I spoke to one not so long a go whose idea of a check was "shake it and see if it rattles or leaks" and if it didn't the boxes were ticked and off it went.....
Then we have the actual shippers (no doubt egged on by certain cargo agents) who will do anything to avoid paying top dollar, whether that be dodgy documents, packaging, anything they think they will get away with.
I know this is a very generic discussion, and I don't wish to detract to the main subject of this tragic accident, just that cargo fires appear to be one of the "killer" items that receive very little attention until one occurs. This may or not be one, it is far too early to speculate.
There are many categories of "dodgy" DG, from undeclared items, which are by far the most dangerous, to technical "snags", no emergency phone number on the DG cert etc.
As the industry attempts to cut costs and lose very experienced, knowledgeable and intelligent staff I can see an increase in incidents, the same way as there will be increases in load errors etc as CLC becomes common place.
As always, beware the weakest links.
Fly safe all.