It seems that all too often open gratings on ships seem to cause accidents and injuries to onboard personnel. An accident report that was recently released by the Danish Maritime Authority on an incident that occurred onboard the Danish chemical tanker Oraness shows the dangers related to open gratings. It appears that the incident could easily have been avoided by simply roping off the hazardous region of the ship, a simple intervention that the Oraness safety authorities failed to perform.
The incident occurred when a cylinder head on the Oraness had to be removed due to damage to a cylinder in the main engine. Two members of crew, a ship assistant with many years of shipping experience and a motorman, had been assigned to repair the cylinder working together with the chief engineer of the ship. A similar task had been performed on another cylinder the previous day, and both crew members assigned to the task were familiar with the procedure involved.
In order to remove the cylinder, the crew members had to make use of a portable electric crane, which on the Oraness runs on an H-beam running along the ceiling of the engine room and down the length of the room.
After shackling the crane to the H beam runner, it is positioned by dragging the crane longitudinally. To remove the cylinder, grating on the deck above the cylinder top needs to be removed. Before removing the cylinder, the crew members removed sufficient grating above the main engine as required.
The ship’s assistant then ascended to the deck above the main engine, and began to pull the crane forward so that it was positioned above the first cylinder. As the assistant was doing so, he fell suddenly through the opening where the grating had been removed, hitting the stringer with his chest and falling 2.5m onto the top of the main engine. He then fell a further 2m from the top of the engine onto the floor boards, landing face down on his hands and knees. Although he was wearing appropriate working clothing and safety shoes, he was not wearing a safety helmet.
Fortunately, the ship assistant survived with only three broken ribs and bruises. However, if he had hit his unprotected head, the results may have been fatal. Simple safety procedures such as roping off the area free of grating may well have prevented this and similar accidents.
