Safety Alert: Portable appliance electrical safety

 

What happened:
A high potential incident occurred at a member’s premises when the plug of a portable heater caught fire. This incident highlights the dangers of untested or unsafe portable equipment being used on site.

Key findings:
• It was found that employees used portable heaters to bring individual rooms up to temperature.
• As portable equipment is moved around, it can often be missed on portable appliance testing regimes.
• Full pre-use checks of portable appliances are rarely carried out by users.

Considerations for members:

Members may wish to consider the following actions:
• Review the risks associated with the use of portable electric heaters and decide whether their use is appropriate across all areas of your site.
• Ensure regular inspection regimes are in place with relevant registers.
• Ensure that competent personnel are available to test portable appliances at regular intervals.
• Ensure the use of personal electrical items is adequately controlled.
• Actively promote pre-use checks; including cable and plug checks, and checking for evidence of PAT tests. Unsafe equipment should be quarantined.
• Provide safety information warning against overloading power sockets and promoting safe use of extension leads.

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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 the Port Skills & Safety and Forth Ports 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.

For previous Safety Alerts follow the link: https://ichca.com/safety-alerts