What happened? A crewman suffered a serious ear injury whilst removing some temporary rigging suspended from a crane gantry walkway. The incident could have been much more serious; the potential […]
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Safety Flashes
IMCA safety flashes disseminate important information on incidents and potential hazards and the lessons learnt from them that can help prevent incidents occurring elsewhere in the industry.
Individual safety events are available individually online, tagged and searchable, while the traditional PDF collections are also available for download.
Submit a Report
All members are encouraged to contribute relevant safety-related information – please visit our Safety Flash Reporting page for details on the submission process.
IMCA Contact
Nicholas Hough
Consultant - Safety and Security
Contact
Safety Events
LTI: finger injury caused while working with oil drums
What happened? A crewmember suffered a fracture to the right-hand ring finger whilst arranging 200l oil drums. The injured person was moving drums from a container using a pallet truck, […]
Potential for diver injury operating a hand-held torque wrench
What happened? A diver was involved in a near miss that could have resulted in serious injury when he was asked to function an ROV valve override on a subsea […]
High potential near miss: dropped object from turbine tower
What happened? At a wind turbine tower, chains weighing 17kg fell 84m. The incident occurred during the pulling through of a 66kv HV cable during installation. The surplus chain came […]
High potential dropped object – chains
What happened? A set of heavy chain links, or ‘Brothers’ used in lifting, fell from a turbine tower onto the front deck of a Crew Transfer Vehicle (CTV) below. The […]
High potential dropped objects from wind turbine Nacelle crane
What happened? Two lifting bags detached and fell from the crane hook on a wind turbine tower. The incident occurred during lowering operations at the end of an annual service […]
Plastic cover on smoke detector
What happened? During an inspection of vessel accommodation by shore management, it was observed that a plastic cover was obstructing a smoke detector. During construction work in the area the […]
UK HSE: fatal injury following catastrophic failure of pressure test equipment
What happened? A 64-year-old worker was fatally wounded by shrapnel ejected from testing equipment. He was leak testing eight 1500 litre cylinders, by applying compressed air inside to create pressure. […]
Two electrical incidents – UK HSE
Here are two recent prosecutions brought by the UK Health and Safety Executive, both relating to inappropriate working arrangements with live power. Incident 1 Two self-employed workers received serious burns […]
Short circuit on 440v AC bus bars – arc flash
What happened? A crewman was doing electrical work on a 440v power distribution panel (PDP), when a loose earth bonding cable made contact with a live 440v bus bar causing […]
Electric shock resulting in burn
What happened? An ROV technician received an electric shock to his left arm beneath the elbow, resulting in a burn. ROV personnel were working in the technical workshop completing a […]
Unsafe lifting operations – potential dropped object
What happened? The Marine Safety Forum (MSF) has published Safety Alert 19-15 relating to a potential dropped object during unsafe lifting operations. An observation was recorded during a routine vessel […]
Poor condition of on-board equipment
What happened? During ‘safety walk arounds’ on one of our members’ vessels, certain equipment was seen to be in poor condition. In the first case, a fire blanket in the […]
MAIB: fatal man overboard incident whilst boarding tug
What happened? The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has published Accident Investigation Report 15/2019 into a fatality whereby a man fell overboard whilst boarding a tug at an oil […]
Worker fell into sea from gangway and drowned
What happened? The Singapore Tripartite Alliance for Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) has published Accident Notification 1920060 relating to a fatal fall from a gangway. This incident is still under […]
Near miss during helicopter operations
What happened? During helicopter flight boarding, a member of the crew crossed a hard barrier (stairway access chain) with a restriction sign and approached the flight deck from the aft […]
Water ingress during tropical storm
What happened? A vessel took on a significant amount of rainwater on the upper tween deck during an intense tropical storm. At the time of the storm, the forward crane […]
LTI: step into open deck hatch causes fall
What happened? During personnel transfer operations on an offshore renewables crew transfer vessel (CTV), a deckhand stepped backwards into an open hatch and fell, resulting in an injury. Before the […]
Improper use of heaving line
What happened? During a mooring operation, vessel crew were found to be using a 4 ton shackle attached to a heaving line (instead of proper “monkey fist”). What went wrong? […]
Vessel hit and destroyed fender
What happened? A vessel collided with the quay, destroying the fenders. The vessel picked up the pilot and proceeded towards the harbour. The wind was SSW 4-5 with good visibility. […]
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