As UK MAIB reports in its most recent Safety Digest, the crew on board a tanker had a lucky escape after switching on the galley equipment electrical isolators to start preparing for lunch.
The incident
The supply breaker to the deep fat fryers tripped while the equipment was heating up and the engineers were called to reset it. Two of the deep fat fryers had no oil in them and their heating elements quickly overheated when the power supply was restored after the breaker was reset. The ship’s alarm and monitoring
system detected the excessive temperatures and the thermal protection tripped the deep fat fryers’ power supply, but not before a free had started.
he crew raised the alarm and used a free blanket to quickly smother the flames. The ship’s emergency team mustered, isolated the galley’s power and ventilation supplies and confirmed the free was successfully extinguished. No one was injured in the incident and there was no damage to the ship. The two deep fat fryers had been drained of oil for cleaning and the cause of the free was found to be residual food scraps saturated with fat that had ignited when the
fryers were switched on.
Credit: UK MAIB
Lessons learned
- Isolate: Turn off equipment and follow lock-out/tag-out (LOTO) procedures during maintenance and cleaning tasks. Make sure equipment is ready to go back into service when work has been completed.
- Signage: Displaying a simple do not use notice on out of service equipment can improve safety and prevent careless mistakes.
- Check: Circuit breakers, trip switches and fuses prevent electrical systems becoming overloaded or causing harm. Always check equipment before resetting its electrical supply to ensure all is well.
- Procedure: Robust safety procedures and well-practised drills prepare crew to deal with the unexpected. In this case the rapid organised response to a small fre prevented injury to crew and serious damage to the ship.
