Case study: Shore personnel accidentally falling into an open manhole onboard regional passenger ferry

What happened?

When a regional ferry arrived at a ferry terminal in Singapore, a ship’s crew opened a manhole cover of fuel oil sounding compartment along the passageway of the passenger main deck compartment and proceeded down to take sounding. Subsequently, a Shore Official (SO), who was carrying out routine security check, accidentally fell into the open manhole and suffered a minor injury. See Figure 1 below.

(Figure 2)

However, the red cordon / warning signage on the starboard side was removed by the engineer after completing fuel oil sounding on the starboard side. He then proceeded to carry out fuel oil sounding at the port side, on the assumption that no personnel would enter the forward passenger compartment. Eventually, he opened the manhole cover at port side fuel oil sounding compartment and proceeded down without setting up any cordon / signages, manhole grating covers or requesting another crew to standby nearby the manhole.

Based on the ferry’s CCTV video footage playback, the SO entered the starboard passenger way to carry out a routine security check. The SO fell into the open manhole fuel oil compartment while walking along port side passageway and suffered a minor injury.

Conclusion

It was assessed that the ferry’s engineer had acted unsafely, having failed to put up a red cordon / warning sign, grating plate or safety barrier while leaving the open manhole unguarded. This implied that the engineer’s safety risk perception was low. This plays a crucial role in decision-making regarding environmental and occupational risk management.

Additionally, there were no adopted procedures and/or work instructions with risk assessments to mitigate or eliminate the associated risks relating to daily fuel oil sounding

Lastly, the information of the open manhole cover was not made known to non-crew member, in this case, the SO, when boarding the ferry, and the SO was also unescorted by the ferry’s crew, not in accordance with the ship security plan.