Safety Flashes – a summary of 2022

This is a summary of the 29 IMCA Safety Flashes published during 2022. All the published safety events or incidents are available on the IMCA website as individual web pages at https://www.imca-int.com/safety-events/. Safety Flashes, comprising a number of events or incidents collected as a PDF, are circulated to members (only) by email.

The 29 Flashes covered 76 individual incidents or events shared by IMCA members. A further 64 incidents or events  from information already in the public domain, from different trade bodies and/or regulators, were shared as being of interest. It should be noted that Safety Flashes are intended to be read by our members’ offshore crews, and by office-based safety professionals.

IMCA Safety Flashes are aligned with the IOGP Life-saving Rules. 25% of our members’ incidents or events involved the “Line of Fire” rule. 22% were “By-passing Safety Controls”. For completeness it should be noted that an incident or event might fall under more than one IOGP Life-saving Rule – or under none at all.

• Line of Fire: Of the 19 incidents or events categorised under “Line of Fire”, six were LTIs. Two were dropped objects. Four were finger injuries, three were foot injuries. Other incidents included an AB caught between when a load was lifted suddenly, a person carried overboard when caught by a moving object, and equipment on the quay being damaged by a crane when a vessel started listing.
• By-passing Safety Controls: Within the 17 incidents or events categorised under “By-passing Safety Controls”, we see things happening such as a fire door being wedged open, an oil tank sight glass being wired open, unnoticed sub-surface power cables being cut, poorly maintained seals on an emergency hatch, and improperly secured cargo shifting during heavy weather.
• Equipment failure accounted for 8 – over 10% – of the incidents or events. Six of these events involved failure of chain hoists, slings, rollers, mooring lines or connections during lifting or mooring operations.
• Fire or potential fire was involved in 4 incidents or events: a lifejacket battery caught fire; there was a flash fire on an Oxygen gas quad hose. A USB power bank caught fire and there was a clogged dryer exhaust with potential for a fire. Only one electric shock incident was shared by IMCA members in 2022.
• Dropped objects: our members shared three dropped object incidents in Safety Flashes this year. A pipe was dropped from pipe supports; a plate fell from the main mast; and a member took a focus on diverse third party dropped objects including heavy pipes, rigging failures through to nuts and bolts, all having the potential for personal injury.

IMCA welcomes Safety Flash submissions from all members. The information shared is dealt with in the utmost confidentiality, is published anonymously, and only with clear written permission from the contributor. The easiest option is for an IMCA email address to be added to a company internal distribution list – several contractors have done this.  Members can send information to IMCA in any format, provided the text can be copied, or you may use the submission template found here.

The Safety Flashes of 2022