Pierre L. Gosselin writes the blog called NoTricksZone and posts about an oil spill on environmentalist ship the Sea Shepard:
Excuses Abound As Sea Shepard Negligently Dumps Up To Half A Tonne Of Diesel Fuel Into Trinity Inlet
Here’s a another example of how environmental activists like to beg, plead and claim real excuses when severe environmental accidents happen, yet when an accident is caused by anyone else they demand heads on a plate.
The Cairns Post here has an article: Sea Shepherd guilty of diesel spill that dropped up to 500 litres of diesel into the Trinity Inlet.
Hat-tip: reader Jim
The article is from earlier this year, but it neither got media attention nor the attention it deserves.
What really strikes me is that the environmental organization comes in with its lawyers and fights tooth and nail in claiming that they really acted responsibly and that the accident was not entirely their fault. The excuses they presented are truly sad and pathetic and show an amazing ignorance when it comes to industrial safety regulation and management.
For example, the Cairns Post writes:
A FAULTY switch and instruction manuals written entirely in Japanese have been blamed in court for why a ship owned by conservation group Sea Shepherd dropped up to 500 litres of diesel into the Trinity Inlet.”
Sorry, but using a piece of equipment that you do not understand is gross negligence. Sea Shepard’s motto here obviously was: Let’s just get this thing running (and safety be damned!)
It’s not for nothing that the fundamental industry standard for any piece of such equipment is: Be sure you have read the manual and have UNDERSTOOD it! The crew obviously could not read Japanese, let alone understand it. Here they should have requested a manual in English from the manufacturer, or at least shelled out the money for a translation, before recklessly attempting to put it into operation at sea. They should especially have at least understood the critical technical points dealing with fuel.
The Cairns Times reports that “a crew member named Gabor Nosty failed to manually flick the “low level” switch during a fuel transfer, despite being aware the switch was faulty.”
If that isn’t gross negligence, then I don’t what is. It is management’s responsibility to be sure that its personnel are qualified and trained to carry out the work they have been assigned to do. Most industrial norms and regulations aren’t there to harass companies, but to prevent accidents involving human life and health, property and the environment. The Sea Shepard crew ignored this entirely.
And not only could they not read the vessel’s operating manual, according to the Cairns Times the Sea Shepherd Australia had bought the ship from Japan a week earlier and “had yet to translate signage and manuals or repair the switch“. Again putting a piece of equipment into operation when its crucial safety signs cannot be read is extremely reckless. The crew can count themselves fortunate nothing much worse happened. We are not talking about a TV here, rather a large piece of industrial equipment with lots of power – with people on board – and all around you.
This is just gross negligence - I do not care how experienced you are, every ship is different and has its own quirks. A brand new crew should have at least one month training on a vessel that size.
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