The US Office of Investigation and Casualty Analysis issued the Marine Safety Alert 03-18 to warn mariners to be careful when it comes to possible on failures on immersion suits.
During a recent inspection, US.Coast Guard Port State Control examiners discovered a significant problem involving almost all of a vessel’s immersion suits.
[smlsubform prepend=”GET THE SAFETY4SEA IN YOUR INBOX!” showname=false emailtxt=”” emailholder=”Enter your email address” showsubmit=true submittxt=”Submit” jsthanks=false thankyou=”Thank you for subscribing to our mailing list”]
The examiners noted that the glue used to attach the main zipper to the body of the suit had failed. Failure of the suit at this location will prevent the suit from achieving a watertight seal.
Such conditions present a serious risk to crewmembers in a survival situation. Due to the high failure rate discovered during the Coast Guard exam (35 out of 40 suits were defective), the Coast Guard strongly recommends that vessel operators inspect their immersion suits for this potential unsafe condition. Do not wait to discover the problem during a real emergency. As a reminder, any replacement survival suits need to be approved by the vessel’s Flag State.
Understood that substandard , fake ,not approved immersion suits onboard fortunately determined by USCG officer possibly hidden notified by the one of crewmembers who intend to accepting his notification to USCG for easiness of his immigirating to USA normally USCG officer random checking not fully control of number of immersion suits subject to vessel in black list but l believe if the immersion suits not sell by ship to another ship and collecting fakes from market the Company is fully responsible and against to SOLAS Convention thus vessel is detained .My opinion is captain is not familiar how standard immersion suits and flags tate approval certificate controlling or related responsible officer did not control when sign on the vessel and this detention happened .