Rescue boat falls, parted on board of a container carrier
resulted in serious injury to ship’s crew
Summery:
A lifeboat drill as opposed to
a muster drill, actually involve people boarding the lifeboats, lowering
them into the water, maneuvered the lifeboat in the water, recovering them back
onto the davits and returning them to their stowed positions in accordance with
SOLAS regulation III/19.3.3. Same procedure would observe on rescue boat drill.
On 30th
of march 2013 a rescue boat of one of the insured container vessels fell down
from 5 m height with assigned persons on board while recovering from the water
following an abandon ship drill, caused an axial bone damage to one of
engineers whose leg bone was also broken.
Investigation
shows that the accident occurred when damaged, shiny and sharp surface of
sheaves in top davit pulley was reason for wire to be parted during recovery of
rescue boat.
Route
cause:
Lack of maintenance (applying
grease) to top block of davit and alternate moving of boat falls, are the main
reasons to damage the pulley’s sheave surface, which caused the wire to part.
In recent
years the maritime industry has suffered an unacceptably high number of
accidents with lifeboats in which crew were injured, sometimes fatally, whilst
participating in lifeboat drills and/or inspections. Most of the accidents fell
under the following categories:
- Failure of release
mechanism;
- Inadvertent operation of
release mechanism;
- Inadequate maintenance of boats,
davits and launching equipment;
- Communication failures;
- Lack of familiarity with boats,
davits, equipment and associated controls;
- Unsafe practices during boat
drills and inspections:
- Design faults of
manufacturer in release mechanisms.
- Effectively training of crew
in emergency situations.
Recommendations:
To avoid
such injury, the IMO has produced guidance relating to the safe servicing,
maintenance and drilling of boats as amendments to the Guidelines (MSC.1/Circ.1206) concerning inspection and
maintenance of boats, launching appliances and on-load release gear of lifeboat as below:
- Specific procedures for
maintenance and servicing.
- Guidelines for periodic
servicing and maintenance of boats, launching appliances and on-load
release gear of lifeboat.
- Guidance on safety during
abandon ship drills using lifeboats.
- Guidelines for simulated
launching of Free-Fall Lifeboats.
One
principal change in MSC/circ.1206 is that while the weekly and
monthly lifeboat inspections are still to be carried out by the crew, should
now be undertaken by the manufacturer’s representative or other person
appropriately trained and certified for the work, rather than the ship’s crew.
In addition the crew had not been effectively trained in the maintenance and use of
the vessel’s emergency lifesaving equipment.