Justice News Headline: Oil Rig Worker Killed in Freak New Year’s Day Accident
The story says:
“According to police officials, a team of workers were reportedly winching up a pipe so that they could change out a drill bit, when for unknown reasons the pipe broke free and crash landed onto a mobile trailer where the other workers were staying. “
What do you think. Freak accident or was it “caused.”
Looks like they need a thorough root cause analysis.
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on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 1:58 am and is filed under Accidents, Current Events, Investigations.
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As a worker in this industry and aware of what would have been happening at the time, I suspect some basic principles were not complied with.
1. Correct sling procedures for connection of the pipe to the winch.
2. People in the DROP area of the pipe.
Both of these can be corrected with only competent persons undertaking the slinging of pipe, using the correct material.
Correct job planning and the interaction of man and machinery, where possible keep them seperated.
and when in doubt STOP the job and see why / if the job has changed from what was planned and discussed and agreed upon by the work group.
Regards
I agree completely.
I guess some strange mechanical failure could happen but it is usually a problem with applying know safety processes.
Thanks for the comment.
Mark
Freak events are caused by extremely rare causes; but they are caused events. The occurrence of an extremely rare event is similar to exceeding an upper control limit on a control chart – cause for an investigation. Participants should be kept out of the drop zone and non-participants should never be in the drop zone for the entire evolution. So it is a freak event, because it is so rare as to not ever be expected, and because it indicates a breakdown of normal operational controls.