Real Life Incident: Fatal Fall Into Container Bay

At night, a container vessel had discharged all containers and commenced loading outbound containers, including reefer containers. Some hatches were left open after discharge was completed.

Eight shore technicians from a service company boarded the vessel to connect the vessel’s power supply to the reefer containers. One of the technicians, standing at bay 21, was attempting to access the reefer connection cables of a container located above him at tier 3 of bay 18 using a cable picker. No one witnessed what happened next, but it is assumed that the technician did not notice or was otherwise unaware that there was an open hatch nearby.

container bay — Image for representation purpose only

About 6.5 hours after the shore technicians had boarded, the technician was found motionless on top of a container in the hold, more than 10m below the deck. A rescue team arrived quickly but the victim was found deceased. His body was removed with the help of a shore crane.

The investigation found that the technician had been working alone near the open hatch cover. It appears the accident was a perfect storm of the common ‘get the work done’ attitude and practices common to the container trade, such as:

No safety meeting before work;
No safety instructions for wearing appropriate PPE during work;
Lack of a risk assessment or control measures taken for working ‘aloft’;
No action to close the hatch cover as soon as discharge cargo operation terminated;
Less than adequate supervision of operations by crew.

Lessons learned

Working on deck is no guarantee that you can’t fall a great distance. Be aware of your surroundings – never work close to an unprotected fall hazard area without the correct equipment such as a fall arrest safety line.
Potential fall hazard areas should be protected or otherwise closed off as soon as possible.
A golden rule to ensure safety is to hold a safety meeting with onboarding contractors before they begin work.

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