Lifeboat Air Bottle Explosion – Maritime Incident Photo Of The Week

This story comes via our friends at the excellent blog Maritime Accident Casebook (MAC for short). Bob Couttie writes:

Of course you regularly check fire extinguishers for corrosion and environmental conditions that might encourage corrosion (You do, don’t you?) but what about the air bottles in your totally enclosed lifeboat?

It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that sea water will corrode gas cylindres but as the photos below show, it’s worth a reminder.

These are not new and come from a 2006 Schatt-Harding presentation to the Nautical Institute.

So check out those air cylinders to avoid a hurt bottom

We have covered this before but this report needs repeating as it comes on the tail of the gCaptain post Lifeboat Incident Video – Dropped From The Falls and MAC’s follow-up article

Davit Launched Lifeboat Freefalls.

Think this couldn’t happen aboard your ship? Last week Transocean’s new flagship, the Discoverer Clear Leader, arrived in the Gulf Of Mexico under much fanfare, soon after the visitors left the inspectors boarded a lifeboat and it dropped. Unconfirmed reports from our forum say no deaths but 4 men were emergency medivac’ed.

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