Why Enclosed Spaces Are So Dangerous? | Enclosed Space Entry

this vessel is an erv or emergency response and rescue vessel they typically work in areas like the north sea standing by offshore installations like oil rigs just in case they're needed in an emergency a number of years ago this particular erv had an emergency of her own though she was standing by an oil rig in the north sea the weather wasn't too bad but it was enough that the ship spent the night rolling around it was nothing the ship couldn't handle in fact the most inconvenient part was just the rattling of the anchor chain coming from the chain locker this is quite common on ships and often crew will just tie up the chain a bit to stop it from banging on this vessel that's exactly what they plan to do two crewmen went forwards and went into the forward store this is just where they keep mooring ropes and deck equipment the floor of the store however forms the top of the chain locker then there are a couple of manhole covers to get down into the chain locker itself now these covers are each secured with a set of bolts for any of you that has experience with these sort of things that alone will be the biggest warning sign of what is about to happen the crew removed a total of 18 bolts from the starboard manhole cover they could then see inside and they could see the chain gently banging around one crewman stayed outside with a radio and the other went in to put lashings onto the chain to stop the noise as he went down the ladder though he quickly lost consciousness and collapsed on seeing his friend collapse the crewman outside the locker called for help on his radio he then went into trump pull his friend out himself he too quickly lost consciousness and also collapsed pretty quickly the vessel sounded its general alarm and prepared to rescue their crewman from the chain locker the first man to attempt the rescue couldn't get down the hatch while wearing breathing apparatus so he swapped that out for an eebd set eebd means emergency escape breathing device it's basically a hood with an air supply designed to get somebody out of a contaminated atmosphere they can't give sustained air and they can't cope with heavy breathing from physical work as he reached the bottom of the ladder for whatever reason his eebd was no longer covering his face he too collapsed and became the third casualty needing to be rescued shortly after that the remaining crew managed to get down into the locker wearing full breathing apparatus at the same time the oil rig sent across a three-man extraction team and a medic to assist between them they gradually extracted the three collapsed crew members and brought them onto deck the coast guard sent medical assistance and a rescue helicopter when they arrived the helicopter transferred the three casualties straight to hospital ashore but sadly none of them actually survived so what happened why did three fit and healthy crewmen perish so quickly in an apparently empty space it comes back to those bolts on the hatch remember i said it should set alarm bells ringing when you see a hatch cover secured with bolts what it means is the space isn't designed to be accessed as a matter of routine it's what we call an enclosed space saying that even a space with a normal door could be an enclosed space enclosed spaces are just spaces that do not have good ventilation they don't have fresh air inside of course at some point every enclosed space was open to the air be it during construction or maintenance or something like that you would have thought that the air in there when it was sealed up would still be in there now but actually the composition of air inside enclosed spaces is constantly changing think about it what is inside the chain locker that we looked at earlier you've got the anchor chain itself and you've got the sides of the locker both of these are made of steel and steel rusts basically the atoms of iron contained within the steel react with oxygen and form iron oxide or rust that process naturally removes oxygen from the space over time enclosed spaces particularly ones on ships or in other metallic structures have a naturally depleting oxygen content normal air should contain approximately 78 nitrogen 21 oxygen and one percent everything else when tested the air inside the chain locker we're looking at actually contained as little as 15 oxygen and that was hours later after all of the rescue activity but it's not just rust that can do that there have been so many cases of different cargos doing the same thing one that comes up time and again is timber cargo inside a hold the timber itself is breathing so it uses up oxygen in the air now i'm not going to go into exactly how you should enter those spaces in this video their entire course is devoted to that subject all i will say is that if you're ever in doubt as to whether the space is enclosed just don't go in my hope today is that you've enjoyed learning about the topic and now understand a little about the reason why these spaces are so dangerous for more content like this every other friday be sure to subscribe right here on the channel until next time thank you for watching and goodbye you

Channel: Casual Navigation

Views: 2,580,258

Keywords: casual navigator, marine, shipping, casual navigation, maritime explaination, merchant navy, sailing, marine animation, enclosed space entry, dangers of enclosed spaces, ship enclosed spaces, ship enclosed space entry, accident at sea

Id: uNVj_JpZia8

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2019