IMCA Safety Flash 17-22
IMCA has published Safety Flash 17-22.
Click to download the IMCA Safety Flash 17-22 here.
Broken Chinese Finger
During a reeving operation of the forward crane auxiliary hoist, there was a failure of a “Chinese Finger” between the messenger wire and auxiliary hoist wire. About 6m before reaching the trolley sheave, the Chinese Finger broke, resulting in the auxiliary hoist wire falling down into the cargo hold. The messenger wire fell on the main deck below the crane trolley.
Failure of 1 ton chain hoist
A chain hoist failure resulted in a chain link breaking which caused an 800kg load to fall to deck from a height of 1 metre. Personnel were working on a wind turbine foundation. A regular shaped load was being moved out of the tower using a chain block suspended from a cantilevered trolley beam on a temporary gantry structure erected on the site. A lifting bag was positioned beneath the gantry structure onto which to lower the winch. When the winch was 1 metre above the lifting bag, one of the chain links on the main chain hoist failed causing the load to fall.
Man overboard from anchor handler tug
A sub-contracted anchor handling tug was performing grapnel run activities using a long chain as a grapnel. Whilst overboarding the chain, a crew member lost balance and fell overboard.
Don’t ASSUME – verify and check
A member reports a number of serious control of work related accidents and near misses, in which a common cause across them all was seen to be ASSUMPTIONS being made without VERIFICATION checks being performed. Three examples were an electric shock, a dropped scaffold plank, and a person in a pipe assembly area whilst equipment was moving.
IOGP: Squeezed hand due to unintentional activation of winch
IOGP has published Safety Alert #336 relating to a squeezed hand due to the unintentional activation of a winch. A crane operator stood by a control panel to operate the mooring winch. On the level below was an auxiliary winch connected to a rope that was hanging over the railing. By mistake, the crane operator activated the lever for the auxiliary winch, and a crewman on the level below saw the rope connected to the auxiliary winch move. He thought the rope was slipping over the railing and grabbed it. At the same time, the crane operator pulled further on the aux winch lever, which resulted in the crewman’s hand being pulled in and squeezed between the railing and the structure.
