by 
I want to help people…
I want to help people at work to make sure their employees are safe and to make sure that they themselves are safe as well.
My motivations for becoming a Health and Safety Advisor are very, very, very strong.
I was in the Merchant Navy for six years and four of my colleagues died. I nearly died twice due to failures in the health and safety system.
The reasons I nearly died was my fault, actually.
There was one time when I was working on a cherry picker on the main deck and I wasn’t wearing a hard hat. I nearly squished my head between the steel rails of the cherry picker and the steel ceiling. I was inspecting the sprinkler system at the time and I had put my head over the side of the cherry picker to get a better look at one of the sprinkler heads. I managed to push the ‘up’ button on the cherry picker instead of the ‘down’ button because I could not see the control panel, and my head was firmly jammed between two pieces of steel. Had I not then managed to press the ‘down’ button I really think that my life would have been over.
Two simple ways in which this incident could have been prevented:
- I should have been wearing a hard hat as identified in the risk assessment
- I should have been concentrating more to make sure I was using the controls correctly.
Another occurrence was when I was going around the world on a general cargo ship. I was going down a ladder to the tween deck and I didn’t look below me to see whether the hatch was open to the lower hold. Sadly, it was, and I nearly fell 40 feet to my death. I managed to save myself by putting both my arms out as I fell down the hatch and bruised most of the bones in my body, but I was alive. There was a sign at the top of the ladder warning people to check the hatch at the bottom, but I was in a rush and so didn’t see it.
The simple way in which this incident could have been prevented:
- I should not have been rushing and should have read the sign at the top of the ladder.
One of my colleagues died as result of an using an angle grinder. He didn’t check to make sure the grinding wheel was attached properly to the handle, so it flew off and split his head in two and he died on the way to hospital. A helicopter was called and did take him off the ship as soon as possible after the incident, but sadly he died on the helicopter before he could get to the hospital.
The simple way that incident could have been prevented:
- My colleague should have checked to make sure that the grinding wheel was properly connected to the handle.
Another two of my colleagues died due to a bulk cargo we were carrying on the way back from the South Pacific. This cargo was copra. Copra is dried coconut kernels from which oil is obtained, and it produces carbon dioxide as it starts to decompose. Carbon dioxide had actually built up in the space between two holds which was open to the environment and so nobody had realised that it was a confined space. My colleague went down to check the atmosphere at the bottom of the space with a gas monitor and was overcome by the carbon dioxide and died immediately. Another one of his colleagues was there and saw him collapse. He immediately tried to go into rescue him and died in exactly the same way because we just hadn’t realised it was a confined space on board that ship. In hindsight we should have realised that, and everything should have been done to stop that from happening.
The simple way in which this incident could have been prevented:
- A thorough assessment of the space should have been carried out prior to entry and the procedure for entry into confined space should then have been adopted.
The final of the four deaths to my colleagues was the suicide of the electrician on board one of my ships. We should have acted on the danger signs, or I particularly should have acted on the danger signs. He was found up a crane with a rope and an empty bottle of vodka the night before and I didn’t notify the captain because I thought he would get into trouble. Had I notified the captain, a suicide watch would have been put on him, and he probably would have been fine in that instance. As it was I found him the next morning hanging from the door of his wardrobe, dead, his wedding ring on his desk.
A simple way in which this incident could have been prevented:
- The captain should have been told as soon as it became apparent that the electrician’s mental health was deteriorating.
I have seen the death of so many people and the subsequent devastation that it caused to the crew and to the family members who were told after the event and it was horrendous and I didn’t want hat to happen to anybody else.
So, that is a very strong motivation for me being a Health and Safety Advisor. All the above incidents could so easily have been prevented at very little cost.
