Near miss – Two dropped objects (MSF)
- Safety Flash
- Published on 25 July 2019
- Generated on 14 October 2025
- IMCA SF 18/19
- 1 minute read
The Marine Safety Forum (MSF) has published Safety Alert 19-08 relating to two dropped object incidents on the same vessel. Both events had the potential to cause major or fatal injuries to vessel deck or installation crew involved in lifting operations.
What happened?
In the first incident, on a vessel engaged in offshore backloading operations, the lifted load came into contact with an adjacent lifted load on the same vessel. A part weighing 3 kg detached from the load and fell to the deck.
In the second incident on the same vessel at a different offshore installation, the crane operator noticed something on top of the lift after it had landing.
He decided to retrieve the lift for further investigation but as it was hoisted, the movement caused one of the pieces to fall off the lift onto the deck.
The vessel deck crew identified two scaffolding poles approximately 1.9 m in length and weighing 10 kg each.
Dropped objects from cargo can be searched for in the IMCA safety incident database by entering terms such as ‘dropped, cargo’.
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