What happened? A rigger walking along the quayside tripped over an obstacle, and in the resulting fall suffered fractures to both wrists, a bone in his hand and his elbow. […]
Safety Flashes
IMCA safety flashes disseminate important information on incidents and potential hazards and the lessons learnt from them that can help prevent incidents occurring elsewhere in the industry.
Individual safety events are available individually online, tagged and searchable, while the traditional PDF collections are also available for download.
Submit a Report
All members are encouraged to contribute relevant safety-related information – please visit our Safety Flash Reporting page for details on the submission process.
IMCA Contact
Nicholas Hough
Consultant - Safety and Security
Contact
Safety Events
Injury sustained during manual handling of sharp object
What happened? A crew member injured his leg while moving a mud agitator with unprotected blades. At the time of incident, the vessel was proceeding to port. First aid was […]
LTI: finger injury during lifting operations
What happened? A crewman suffered a serious hand injury whilst working on subsea mattress recovery using a quick release mattress handling beam. The lifting webbing slings and ROV hooks were […]
Finger injury: diver caught finger in bell door
What happened? A diver suffered an injury when his finger got caught between the top of the bell door and the retaining latch. The incident occurred at the end of […]
Snagged lift during deck cargo operations
The Marine Safety Forum (MSF) have published Safety Alert 18-19, in which a hoisted 10ft container became snagged on the bridle of a backloaded tote tank. A ‘stop stop stop’ […]
Recurring Hand Injury
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has published Safety Alert No. 336 regarding a hand injury sustained during lifting procedures. During a slow lifting process to remove a […]
Serious Injury from Rotating Winch
What happened? A person involved in spooling a wire onto the main crane forward tugger winch drum suffered a serious foot injury. To facilitate the operation, he positioned himself in […]
High Potential Near Miss: Line of Fire During Mooring Operations
What happened? A seafarer was caught in the line of fire and temporarily trapped by a mooring line, but fortunately escaped without serious injury. During the mooring of an offshore […]
Seamanship: Vessel Collision with Fishing Boat
What happened? A vessel was in collision with a fishing boat. The incident occurred in foggy, zero visibility conditions on a ballast voyage. Our members’ vessel was passing through some […]
Life raft self-activates and falls to the quayside
What happened? A life raft self-activated and fell from its cradle from the vessel deck, 8m down onto the barriered quayside bollard area. The weather temperature at the time was […]
Unplanned deployment of free fall lifeboat
What happened? On a vessel alongside there was an unplanned deployment of a free fall lifeboat (FFB), which no-one was aware of. There were no witnesses to the inadvertent launch, […]
Dropped object: first aid injury during ROV maintenance
What happened? A tooling tray guide arm fell from an ROV skid rail slot and hit an ROV technician’s torso. He was beneath the ROV disconnecting the securing pin. Two […]
Two serious dropped object near miss
Two further dropped object cases have been reported recently, highlighting the extreme danger and potential for fatalities. Incident 1 A light and fitting on a third-party ship, weighing 8kg, fell […]
Dropped object: crane floodlight
What happened? A floodlight fell from its position on the knuckle boom of the vessel’s crane. The floodlight arrangement was supported on a stainless steel bracket, comprising a bar and […]
Dropped pipe incidents with potentially fatal consequences
What happened? During line pipe load out operations, three high potential near miss incidents occurred involving quayside crane lifting operations. All of the incidents had the potential for fatal consequences […]
Pro-active intervention prevented high potential dropped objects
What happened? During inspection of the vessel crane, it was noted that a steel spacer plate had become partially detached due to corrosion forming behind the plate. The plate had […]
Two ‘accident advisories’ relating to diver fatalities
The Workplace Safety and Health Council of Singapore (WSHC) has released two ‘accident advisory’ notices relating to two recent diver fatalities. Incident 1: diver struck by falling concrete pile A […]
Unplanned stored pressure release: worker struck by gas cylinder – company fined
What happened? The UK HSE (UK Health and Safety Executive) has fined a company for health and safety breaches after a technician was struck by a cylinder and left severely […]
High potential near miss: unplanned handling of unexploded ordnance
What happened? During debris removal/recovery operations being undertaken along a subsea cable trenching corridor, several items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) were bought to the surface and landed on deck with […]
Finger injury caused by falling wire wedge
What happened? A crewman suffered a crushed finger during an operation to replace a winch wire on a large crane. Two crew members were installing a wire wedge into the […]
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