Three men died and three were injured after inhaling hydrogen sulfide on a vessel at the Sabah port in Sepanggar.
Local media reports that the two of the men died on board the vessel while the third died at the Likas Hospital. The Fire and Rescue Department director said that the Hazmat team determined that they had inhaled hydrogen sulfide
The incident occured on Tue 29th of March, 2016 onboard a fishing trawler at Sabah port, Malaysia. The three men died after inhaling poisonous gas released from a fish storage chamber which had kept its contents beyond the time limit.
City police chief disclosed that all six men who were Indonesian workers of a deep sea fishing company who had been offshore for seven days, had returned to the Sabah Port jetty about 12.30am yesterday.
At the time of the incident, at about 7.30am, the first victim was opening the fish storage chamber to unload the catch, but collapsed.
Seeing this, the second victim then went into the chamber to help his workmate but also collapsed. A similar outcome happened to the subsequent victims, until one of them, La Hebo, managed to come out of the chamber and asked the others to help the other victims.
The other workers managed to pull out the victims using a rope, but medical staff from the Likas Hospital who arrived at the scene about 8.40am, confirmed that two had died at the scene.
The other victims were taken to the hospital for treatment, but one was later confirmed to have died about 10.30am.
According to Borneo Post , early reports by the Kota Kinabalu Fire and Rescue Service Department’s Fire and Chemical Unit Assistant Superintendent Khairul Anuar Pajar Ali confirmed there was hydrogen sulfide inside the fish storage chamber of dangerous amount that can cause death when inhaled. It was produced by the storing of fish beyond the supposed period and without good ventilation.
