Fatality Western Australia & Sat divers injured

[Wingy]

Recreational Fatality & Commercial Accident Western Australia

Sad news - Man dies in Garden Island diving tragedy

Sadly a trip out to Garden Island to catch some Christmas crayfish has left a no doubt devastated family - This is a private boat accident.

Deep-sea divers injured off WA coast in high pressure incident

No further information and companies involved are being very tight lipped. The governing body are working with WorkSafe re operational practices and standards - best of luck to the injured guys.

 

[Kay Dee]

What a coincidence. Just last night watched 'Pioneer', a very good (Scandanvian / subtitled) movie about pioneering mixed gas sat diving in the sea off Norway in the early 70's, an accident and the tricks played to get or hide the mixes the various sat companies where using (i.e. read 'testing' / experimenting with).

Anyway hope those WA lads end up all good, but it sounds to me something way more serious than just a case of HPNS occured, especially if their still unwell.

 

[Wingy]

Weirdly KayDee this was a total surprise to WorkSafe here on Christmas morning when I mentioned it....another friend working for Bristows and familiar with Icythus field had no knowledge either - gag order?

Very curious to find out more and does not sound good with the still unwell.

 

[iain/hsm]

This happened some time back November last year and is under review hence why your not getting any information and I dont think it will involve Worksafe as it is not technically an accident. (more a medical incident)
From a divers perspective the article posted a 234MSW storage depth and a blowdown rate quoted of 8 hours for the first team and 5 hours 20 minutes for the second team This is about 12 hours too short off the "prescribed" nominal blowdown rate for that storage depth. ( To be confirmed I will check those numbers when back at work) But it is claimed within USN

NOPSEMA Aus are the outfit responsible for the safety aspects as far as I am aware and have stated they will publish the safety review but this will not include the health issues or identify any of the divers involved for obvious reasons. There is no gag order as far as I am aware.

FYI I should declare an interest in that I have worked for both the Total Ichthys FPSO Platform on a separate project and in a earlier project supplied a 250 msw sat chamber system for Dr Phil Bryson from the UK who is now involved in the medical aspects of divers as he is mentioned in the article posted below.

For a further update from Perth outlines the main issue.

Inpex Australia Ichthys LNG project: claims divers suffering brain damage

 

[iain/hsm]

This is the article that kicked things off from the Sunday Times.

PressReader.com - Connecting People Through News

 

[Wingy]

Thanks Iain - NOPESMA's report AFAIK like any done by WorkSafe, Dept Mines or appropriate Regulatory body will eventually be in the public domain and I'm sure it will make for interesting reading. The MUAs missive that the divers chose to remain silent or not seek further treatment due to loss of livelihood and associated "claims" that the company were not playing ball seems to gel with total lack of information on this until now. An "informal" agreeance not to discuss this and keeping it in house for want of a better term than 'gag order' fits the MUAs claims - FWIW i fully support the MUA (on most things!)
Usually there is some cross agency information or "chatter" for want of a better word which is why my relatives working in the safety and compliance industry and particularly the relative working for a contractor at Ichthys interacting with Sat Divers on a daily basis were stunned that the first they heard of the incident was when I mentioned it after spotting the initial article.
People are often surprised to find how strict our Safety regs in workplaces are - I actually think Australia has great legislation (other than that harmonisation thing taking forever) and fully expect total transparency as is the standard here.
I would expect the medical stuff to be a part of NOPESMAs investigation and if not published by NOPESMA then I am assuming Dr Bryson and Colleagues would deliver their findings at some stage?
Thank you for your imput - good to have someone familiar with the industry and players involved noticing this post.
My hope is that this incident provides information that highlights the root cause and addresses any failures in the system so that we can keep workers safe - as well as the medical findings perhaps leading to safer diving practices in all sectors.

 

[iain/hsm]

Thanks Wingy.
Not wishing to add anything here but just for information to wider forum members.
The pressure to time constraints are better understood in decompression than in compression (blowdown) yet neither can be relied on as being fully risk free.
Yet the collective experience of divers is that we are in decompression at a greater risk than in compression. But this is due more to the relative fewer risk effect problems with compression than with decompression.
At the sharp end it’s heat and ear clearing problems for the air dive chamber range but a sat blowdown has little of this save that this was a very deep holding depth and a straight rate compression to that depth in such a short time maybe was just a tad too fast.
The main interest is why such a rate and although a number of options are well known to some of us in the industry but as yet this is not discussable on a open forum.
And another problem. Each and every company has its own rates of compression its only after saturation that some adopt the USN rates, But for my experience other tables used such as Comex, Virginia Mason, Oceaneering etc all have held there own rates as safe.
However this dive was from the DSV Skandi Singapore its a completely different animal 21st century computer controlled diving.

http://www.dof.no/Files/System/dof2008/pdf/csv/Skandi_Singapore.pdf

I should declare again I have also worked on both DOF Subsea projects and last on the DOF Subsea, Skandi Santos so cant say much about the colour of the deck, but save to say as an old timer here its more about experience than computer led "intelligent gas analysis" plugged with chamber entertainment and in chamber "mood lighting" .........This is one thing.
But leaving the iPad to run your blow down rate….. Just sayin if you catch my drift.

 

[dmaziuk]

... But leaving the iPad to run your blow down rate…

Holy crap. I hope they have 3 different ones running from different sensors, on different hardware and software, and a supervisor program ringing bells and whistles if the three disagree by more than a few percent.

 

[Wingy]

Funny you should mentioned Skandi...was standing on deck of another ship admiring her flashy sleek high tech lines when I noticed my IPad had connected to an unsecured connection coming from her direction...can we go three human supervisors dmaziuk?

 

[JohnnyC]

But leaving the iPad to run your blow down rate….. Just sayin if you catch my drift.

Seems less than ideal.....