Risks Involved in Enclosed Spaces and How These Can Be Mitigated

When you see a casualty in a tank, do not rush and enter the tank to save him. Instead sound the alarm and muster the emergency team. 

Memories of this important lesson to cadets like me during a basic course in the 90s are still afresh. And we were told that enclose space is the talk of the town.

Irony is that 18 years later, concerns about enclosed space casualties is still the talk of the town. As per IMO, on average two seafarers in a month still die because of enclosed space incidents.

There are extreme efficient procedures in place but enclosed space incidents did not decrease in last 2 decades. There can be many contributory factors for that.

We may go overboard in addressing the problem but the fact remains that there are four elements that we need to address for safe enclosed space entry.

• Ensuring the atmosphere is safe inside the enclosed space
• crew not hesitant to declare emergency
• Crew outside will be able to hear the emergency call
• Crew outside are ready to tackle the emergency

Before we proceed to discuss these, we need to know what exactly is an enclosed space ?