Safety Alert: Wear can reduce the safe working life of wire ropes

 

On July 23, 2022, the cargo ship Thorco Basilisk was offloading a wind turbine component at a terminal when the hoisting wire rope on one of the ship’s cargo cranes failed, causing the component to drop onto the vessel’s cargo hold tween deck.

 

Thankfully, no injuries were reported. Damages to the ship and cargo were estimated between $3-5 million.
Examination showed significant external corrosion and wear on the rope. However, the visible signs of external corrosion could not be fully seen until the grease on the rope was removed. Annual surveys had been performed on the wire ropes, but these principally involved visual inspections and did not identify the underlying corrosion below the grease.

The rope was still within the standard 10-year period of use. Post incident examination found “the wire rope was near the end of its service life and probably should have been discarded.” The operating company has since updated their planned maintenance system to require crane wire rope replacement every 5 years.
Report Link: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20231213.aspx

 

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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 USA 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.