Lack of communication causes tragedy on board CD Manzanillo
A misunderstanding between crew members resulted in a deadly explosion and fire at sea.
Much of the time, accidents are the product of longstanding systemic problems. Commercial pressure to maximise vessel uptime and minimise inspection delays cause a long-neglected part to fail, or an extremely tired and overworked seafarer makes a devastating error.
But not every maritime incident can be attributed to complex underlying causes. Sometimes, without warning, somebody will just make a fundamental mistake, exacerbated by a lack of communication. The explosion and fire on CD Manzanillo in 2023, which claimed the life of a seafarer, fits into the latter category.
CD Manzanillo departs Peru
On the morning of 10 October 2023, CD Manzanillo was en route from the Port of Callao in Peru, carrying a cargo of copper concentrate, to the Port of Onsan, Korea, where it was scheduled to refuel before proceeding to Yantai, China, for the planned discharge of its cargo on October 28.
At 6:30am, the bosun convened with the chief mate (CM) on the bridge to discuss the day’s deck work. Bad weather was on the way, and tasks for the day included securing lashings and loose items on the forecastle deck, organising the deck crew for painting jobs, and sorting garbage in the ship's designated waste area.
To prevent plastic waste from going overboard in the bad weather, the CM instructed the bosun to burn the waste in an empty 200-litre oil drum on the open deck at the aft of the accommodation, using wastepaper as an accelerant. Almost simultaneously, the master and chief engineer discussed offloading the same waste when in China. It would appear the CM was not told about the plan.
Sometime later, at 8:00am, the CM’s instruction for burning waste was relayed to an ordinary seaman (OS). Handing over the task, the CM emphasised safety measures including wearing PPE and avoiding open flames near paint containers and freshly painted areas. At no point was the instruction recorded in writing, however.
The crew members then dispersed to their allotted tasks, with the bosun and OS beginning their housekeeping duties while other crew prepared for painting on the upper deck. Once they had finished organising the waste, they gathered it for burning.
The bosun was continuing janitorial duties in the gymnasium and changing room when the OS prepared to burn the plastic waste on the poop deck.
At 2:20pm, the sound of an explosion ripped through the vessel, and the fire alarm began to sound. The second mate immediately sounded the general alarm and announced the fire location on the poop deck. The bosun, master and several other crew members rushed to the poop deck to discover the OS engulfed in flames. The bosun quickly extinguished the fire on the OS’s coveralls with a hose.
As the crew rushed the OS to the ship’s hospital, he explained that instead of using wastepaper as an accelerant, he had sprayed paint thinner on the barrel’s contents and ignited it through a hole low down in the side of the drum. This caused the explosion that had set his clothing ablaze.
Treated in the ship’s hospital with assistance from the International Radio Medical Centre, the OS at first appeared to be in stable condition. But two days later, on 12 October, his condition rapidly deteriorated. After crew and shore medical staff desperately tried to revive the 26-year-old, he was pronounced dead by an attending doctor on the morning of 13 October.
What went wrong and what lessons were learned
Even with the incredibly flammable paint thinner, it is difficult to say exactly what caused the explosion. But in its investigation, the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (Singapore) deemed that the paint thinner can had been left open, and close to the slot in the drum where the OS set the flame. “Thinner emits flammable gases, especially when the thinner tin is left uncapped,” the investigation determined.
These gas fumes would be heavier than air, causing them to hang around close to the flames. “The light air condition at the poop deck further contributed to the build-up of hazardous flammable gases in the vicinity,” the investigation found.
The Bureau identified a “clear issue with communication” among crewmates, with the master and chief engineer having failed to relay their plan to offload the waste in China to the rest of the crew, leaving the CM with the impression that the waste urgently needed to be disposed of before the next port call. There was “no real urgency” to get rid of the plastic in this way, the report found.
The Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (Singapore) also noted that in training, there was no established procedure for burning plastic garbage on deck; something widely understood to be dangerous for humans. Likewise, the practice was not approved in the company’s safety management system (SMS).
Image: Port of Callao, Peru, from where the CD Manzanillo departed in September 2023; credit: Shutterstock.
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