The Swedish P&I Club has issued its Monthly Safety Scenario for September 2016 regarding an injury incident caused from standing under a pallet.
The incident
The vessel was loading alongside late in the evening. A small truck arrived on the quay with two pallets of paint. The driver attached two of his own slings to the pallets but there were no crew members on the quay to assist him. The driver attracted the attention of the duty AB who was monitoring the loading. The AB called the bosun on the radio to come and help. The bosun arrived shortly afterwards. The only crew onboard were the duty engineer, duty officer and master as the rest of the crew were ashore.
The bosun was operating the crane and the duty AB was acting as a signaller. The driver had parked the truck a couple of meters from the edge of the quay. When the bosun lowered the crane wire it lowered at an angle as the pallet was not directly under the crane. The bosun asked the driver to park the truck closer to the vessel but that was not possible. The driver suggested that he attach a rope to the pallet so that he could direct the pallet while being hoisted. As the pallet was lifted the driver was standing under the pallet and it suddenly tilted. One can unfortunately hit the driver on the head and the rest of the cans dropped into the water and onto the quay.
The driver wasn’t wearing a hardhat and received a gash on his head. The bosun and AB ran down onto the quay to give the driver first aid. The second officer also arrived to assist. The master called the port and asked for an ambulance and also reported the accident to the agent. The quay and vessel became stained with paint.
Port representatives boarded the vessel and asked for the vessel to retrieve all of the paint cans and clean up the quay. They also questioned the master about the driver’s accident. Divers were ordered to retrieve the cans, but due to safety reasons they could not commence diving until daytime. Unfortunately the divers were only able to retrieve one can. The port authorities asked the divers to continue the search until the cans had been retrieved. The vessel was not permitted to leave on schedule, which inflicted extra costs.
Consequences The vessel was delayed until the next day as the port authorities requested the diving operation to continue. The vessel had to bear the cost of the diving and clean-up operation. The driver was not severely injured but did receive a rather big gash to his head, which required stitches in hospital. Issues to be considered [/box] Source & Image credit: Swedish P&I Club
