200335 Safety Helmet Protection
Safety Helmet Protection
Report No. 200335
There has been a increase in accidents onboard due to mooring lines parting / hitting the crew during mooring operations. This report is of a very recent incident on a bulk carrier. The vessel was required to move forward about 30 meters to load the after hatch.
The full complement was on stations fore and aft. During the shift, the forward spring lines became too long. One of these was on the drum while the other was on the bitts. The spring line on the drum was quite slack but the other spring had caught underneath a fender and was taut. The Master instructed the C/O to slack on that spring too, however, the C/O instructed the AB to make fast the spring on the bitts. He was probably looking to clear the fender by tightening the rope. The rope did get taut but it did not clear the fender immediately. As the spring leads were very long, the C/O could not see the spring under the fender. To get a better view, he went down on the main deck abreast the forward end of No.2 hatch and tried to direct operations from there.
The C/O was looking at the men on the forecastle and instructing them to heave on the headlines. The spring line suddenly freed itself and jumped at high velocity, hitting the C/O on the neck. He was thrown off his feet and his head hit against the forward corner of no.2 hatch coaming causing a puncture at the back of his skull and his ear to be sheared off. The main deck was 4 meters above the jetty, the length of spring towards completion of shift was about 60 meters and the C/O was wearing a helmet at the time of incident.
The parting or slipping of mooring ropes under tension has claimed many lives onboard. In almost all of the cases the victims were wearing safety helmets and watching the ropes. In all cases when mooring ropes part and cause head injury, it proves fatal. Cases of ropes hitting other parts of the body often result in broken bones but not fatal injuries! In my view, the problem lies with not following safe working practices and over reliance on safety helmets.
On modern ships with low manning levels there are only just enough persons to carry out the mooring operations. Normally the officer will receive orders from bridge, relay them to linesmen and run back to tend to lines with the other crew. Everything is done in a hurry and officers are over-stressed. Their concentration is divided and, despite fully knowing the dangers associated with ropes under tension, they make mistakes.
Nothing much can be done about the speed of operations, nor can we help low manning levels. The only area of improvement is the safety helmet. Safety helmets are designed to withstand vertical impact. They will retard the effect of any vertical impact to tolerable limits and can take care of normal banging on the head horizontally. However, they cover only one-third of the head and are liable to slip off if impacted from any angle below its horizontal plane. When ropes under tension part, they can never hit vertically or horizontally, only below the safety helmet. Even if they do hit the safety helmet, due to massive force of impact, the helmet just flies off and the face or skull takes the full weight of impact. Wearing these safety helmets, the users get a false sense of safety and tend to take more risks. The wearing of a safety helmet during mooring stations is like wearing a bullet proof pants instead of a jacket!
The ideal way to reduce head injuries is to provide a complete protection down to the neck level. The only items available commercially which can give such protection are crash helmets used by motorbike riders. These are designed to withstand a much greater force hitting the head from any direction and do not slip off and expose the skull or head to the impact.
Apart from the above, just consider a few more advantages of crash helmets verses safety helmets on an oil or chemical tanker. On a tanker, the decks are open and there are very few places where the crew can bang their head. There is virtually no chance of any objects falling on the head. The danger of injury comes from pipelines giving way, pneumatic hoses let loose, steam valve cocks opened accidentally, etc. The safety helmet is not covering those parts of body. If we used crash helmets on tanker's decks they could provide better protection by completely covering the face and head. On chemical tankers so many accidents happen due to dangerous chemicals spraying on crew's faces. In many cases they lose their eyesight. Of course to avoid damage to the eyes they are required to wear safety goggles. However, in many instances, especially with corrosive cargoes, sprays on the face will burn the skin and sometimes liquids find their way inside the goggles. The crash helmet will not allow anything to come in contact with face hence will provide complete safety.
There is not much of a cost difference between safety helmets and crash helmets. Some small modifications may need to be incorporated to enable the use of walkie-talkies. The use of crash helmets with a visor can eliminate the requirement of goggles and ear muffs thus providing a saving for the company. On non-tanker vessels they should be used during mooring operations. I strongly believe the use of crash helmets could save so many seamen's lives and I wouldn't have lost my close friends if they had used a crash helmet instead of a safety helmet.
Feedback
I fully agree with the report on safety helmet protection. Indeed, a standard helmet gives you a false sense of safety. Crash helmets are nowadays used in Formula 1 by the teams during pit stops, and this illustrates very well the protection against sprays - or worse - fire. The protection against the ship's hard and solid steel structures is clear. The protection against parting ropes will depend on how the rope hits the person but the standard safety helmet hardly offers any protection at all!
Crash helmets may constitute a significant improvement for all, especially when a communications system is integrated in order to allow hands-free communications. One disadvantage however is the temperature. When riding a bike, the airflow will provide surface cooling, whereas this will not be the case when working in high or tropical temperatures.
It may seem expensive indeed, especially the communications system. However, one serious accident avoided may make up fully for that. Nevertheless, it will be hard to convince the people in charge of the budget to approve such an expense, if they have not been confronted with the cost of medical treatment and repatriation - or worse. Therefore, I feel there is an important role for the P&I clubs. They are well aware of the figures involved, and they could contribute to the safety of the crew by offering bonuses to the companies who do implement such helmets, or more stringent by simply imposing this on the owners.
It is a matter of calculating how much they spend on accidents of this nature, then spreading the cost over the life span of the helmets and the number of crew involved, and offering this sum as bonus to their members. This may be slightly over-simplified but I am sure it can be figured out. In this way everyone benefits and the risk is reduced for the people involved. The money formerly spent on claims (through the premiums paid by the owners!) could be spent on prevention and the economy would benefit as well.