By Dr. Anand Hiremath, CEO, Sustainable Ship and Offshore Recycling Program (SSORP)
Ten workers lost their lives during a ship recycling operation in Chattogram on 14 August. Their deaths have understandably renewed questions about safety standards, certification and the progress made by the ship recycling industry.
Whatever the final findings on responsibility, an outcome of this scale is unacceptable. The immediate priority must be to understand how the accident occurred, identify what existing risk assessments may not have adequately considered and make sure the same sequence cannot be repeated.
The statutory investigations will establish the full circumstances and responsibilities. The observations here arise from a preliminary technical assessment and are not intended to pre-empt those findings. They do, however, point to a wider safety issue that deserves attention across the industry.
The maritime sector has spent decades developing strong controls for enclosed spaces. Before a person enters, the atmosphere is tested, ventilation is established, access is controlled and emergency arrangements are put in place. Those controls remain essential.
The recent accident raises a different, but related, question.
The workers involved in the initial exposure were in an open work area when the bottom of a double-bottom ballast tank was cut. They were not undertaking a conventional confined-space entry. The source of the hazard was unquestionably an enclosed space, but the exposure occurred outside it.
That distinction must not be used as a defence. It should instead prompt the industry to examine whether its safety controls begin early enough.
Hydrogen sulphide is heavier than air. If it is released suddenly from a low point, a dangerous cloud can form close to ground level even in an open atmosphere. The fact that workers are standing outside a tank therefore does not necessarily mean that natural ventilation will protect them from a large and rapid release.
This is an important part of understanding what happened. It avoids the false choice between describing the event as a conventional confined-space accident or treating the open work area as inherently safe. Neither description fully captures the hazard.
Our preliminary technical assessment suggests that prolonged biological activity inside a ballast tank may have played an important role. Biofilm can develop in ballast tanks and, where seawater remains in a closed environment for a prolonged period, oxygen depletion can create anoxic conditions. Over time, temperature, changes in pH and other conditions may contribute to the formation of hydrogen sulphide.
The condition of a ballast tank is therefore not necessarily static. A tank that appears to present one level of risk at an earlier stage of recycling may develop very different internal conditions after remaining closed for many additional months.
This is particularly relevant in a recycling process that extends over a prolonged period.
By the time of the accident, about 70% of the vessel had already been recycled. The engine room and accommodation had been dismantled safely, while two other ballast tanks had previously been dealt with using the same general method without the same outcome.
That fact should not be used to lessen the seriousness of the accident or to defend any participant. It illustrates a familiar problem in industrial safety.
When an operation has been completed successfully several times, confidence in the method naturally increases. A task gradually becomes routine. But previous success does not mean the conditions behind the next piece of steel will be identical.
The successful opening of one ballast tank cannot become the risk assessment for the next.
The broader certification context is relevant for the same reason. The recycling facility had been subject to review by recognised organisations and operated within the developing
Hong Kong Convention certification framework. That does not prove that every operational risk had been identified, nor does the accident make certification meaningless. It shows why any safety and certification system must be capable of evolving when operating experience reveals a hazard that has not been sufficiently considered.
The technical classification of the accident is therefore important.
It can be described as an uncontrolled release of stored hazardous liquid and its dissolved gas load from a residual enclosed space into an adjacent open work area, during the breaching of that space at its lowest point.
In that sense, this was a stored-energy event as much as a toxic-atmosphere event.
When a colleague collapses, the natural instinct is to rush forward and help. In a toxic-gas incident, that instinct can turn one casualty into several in a matter of moments.
Rescue therefore cannot depend on improvisation. Appropriate breathing apparatus must be immediately available where the risk assessment requires it, trained personnel must be capable of responding and access to a suspected gas-affected area must be controlled.
Regular, realistic rescue drills are equally important. A drill should test what actually happens when somebody collapses in a gas-affected work area. Who raises the alarm? Who prevents others from entering? How quickly can a properly protected rescue team respond? Is the equipment ready for immediate use?
Those are practical questions, not paperwork.
Responsibility for specific failures must be determined and acted upon through the official process. At the same time, it would be a mistake for the wider industry to treat this only as an issue concerning one yard, one vessel, one cash buyer, one owner or one certification body.
If a routine operation can produce a hazard that existing risk assessments did not sufficiently anticipate, the lesson belongs to the whole system.
The maritime industry already understands that entering an enclosed space demands strict controls. The lesson from this accident is that those controls may need to begin one step earlier.
Even in an open work area, the danger can come out of the tank.
Ship recycling safety must start before the first cut.
Author:
Dr. Anand Hiremath, CEO, Sustainable Ship and Offshore Recycling Program (SSORP)
