A maritime investigation in the UK has blamed failure to follow basic safety principles for the death of an offshore worker.
The worker, David Stephenson died after suffering crushing injuries when a 4-ton cursor fell on him as he worked on a diving support vessel. The brake failed when the power was turned off, and the equipment fell on the seaman. The injured worker was flown to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, and died the same evening. The accident occurred in April last year, just as families of offshore workers were mourning the deaths of 17 people in a helicopter crash in the North Sea.
The accident was blamed on the malfunctioning of the winch on the diving support vessel. The Marine Accident investigation Branch says that the tragedy has lessons for the offshore industry. It has issued a safety flyer to the offshore support industry which says that although the accident occurred due to a defective valve, the death could have been avoided if the curser had been supported using other means. The flyer warns employers not to blindly trust a piece of equipment that is not fully tested.
Failure to take adequate safety precautions, over reliance on a piece of machinery and failure to place safeguards that would act if any part of the winch failed – all of these seem to have contributed to the tragedy. As a maritime attorney, I find this kind of carelessness reprehensible. That there was no other mechanical safeguard in place to protect a worker from being crushed if the machinery malfunctioned, makes me wonder if maritime safety standards are still stuck in the 18th century.
