Safety Alert: Lithium-ion Battery Explosion Leads to Fire on Oil Tanker
The National Transportation Safety Board report into a fire on board a docked oil tanker which caused $3 million in damage reveals that the cause of the fire was the thermal runaway of a cell within a handheld radio’s lithium-ion battery.
The fire was caused by one of the cells in a lithium-ion battery for an ultra-high-frequency handheld radio exploding. The batteries and chargers for the handheld radios were located on the communications table on the bridge. The vessel’s crew extinguished the fire. Vessel navigation, communication and alarm systems were damaged beyond use. No injuries were reported.
Lessons:
The risk of thermal runaways and ensuing fires can be reduced by:
- Following manufacturers’ instructions for the care and maintenance of lithium-ion batteries
- Properly disposing of damaged batteries
- Avoiding unsupervised charging
- Keeping batteries and chargers away from heat sources and flammable materials
According to the report: “Companies should ensure that lithium-ion batteries and devices that use lithium-ion battery packs are certified by Underwriters Laboratory or another recognized organization”.
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ICHCA International is committed to helping industry to learn lessons fast, learn them once and make sure that they stay learnt. This information is intended to provide all organisations in the cargo supply chain with the opportunity to consider the events and to review and adapt their own health and safety control measures to proactively prevent future incidents.
We are grateful to National Transportation Safety Board for providing details and for raising awareness. We acknowledge their commitment to sharing learning to benefit others. If you have similar operations, please share this information with managers, operatives and any potentially affected third parties as appropriate. Please also review any of your relevant operations for similar hazardous conditions, risks, and controls. Learning content like this is highly valuable as it is based on real-world experience. We encourage everyone with publishable information about incidents to send it to us, so that we can raise awareness across the whole industry. Please contact us at secretariat@ichca.com; sharing your insight could save a life or prevent injury.