Lifeboat Drill Accidents

Lifeboats are essential for safety on large ships, but lifeboat drill accidents have caused many accidents, injuries, and fatalities. If you work aboard a ship with lifeboats and have been injured during a drill, maritime laws protect you and could help compensate you for your medical and other expenses.

Lifeboat Drill Requirements 

A drill includes crew members getting people into lifeboats, lowering those boats into the water, often from a great height, lifting them back up, and re-stowing them. The lifeboat loading process is fraught with dangers, which is why it is practiced.

Drills are necessary to ensure the crew can safely get the lifeboats and passengers into the water. During an actual lifeboat situation, many more people and passengers may be panicking. Adequate practice is necessary so that the crew can go through the routine safely, even with distractions.

International rules state that ship crew members must participate in a lifeboat drill at least once a month. Each crew member must meet this requirement, so there may need to be more than one drill per month to involve every member of the ship’s personnel. Often, this requirement comes down to the period just before a ship departs.

Because of accidents that have occurred in recent years during these drills, guidelines have been created in an attempt to make them safer:

• Inspections of lifeboats and related equipment must be made regularly by experts from the manufacturer instead of the crew.
• Another change allows lifeboats to be launched during drills without crew members aboard.
• Guidelines for the functioning of the release mechanism have also been changed to make these safer and to avoid incidents in which the mechanism fails, and the boat falls into the water.

Common Lifeboat Drill Accidents

The changes to guidelines and requirements for these safety drills were made to curb the number of accidents during these events. Numerous accidents have led to the injuries or deaths of crew members, which could have been avoided.

Equipment failures, poor communication, and harmful practices are the most common causes of accidents during drills.

Most of the lifeboat drill accidents that have occurred could be blamed on the following:

• The failure of the release mechanism for lowering the lifeboats into the water
• A failure to communicate appropriately from one crew member to another during a drill
• Inadequate training of crew members leading to unfamiliarity with the equipment being used
• Unsafe or negligent practices during drills
• Accidental operation of the release mechanism, causing free-falling lifeboats
• Poor maintenance of lifeboats and related equipment
• Failure of mechanisms on lifeboats and related equipment

Another critical issue with lifeboats is that many of the boats in use today are not designed well enough to hold the number of people they are supposed to be able to carry.

This may be related to global increases in weight, while the standards for lifeboats have not changed. Average weights have gone up, while lifeboat capacity has stayed the same. This could lead to severe accidents during actual abandon-ship incidents.

Examples of Lifeboat Drill Accidents

Too many tragic accidents have occurred during drills for lifeboat safety and abandon ship procedures.

Lifeboat Fatalities in Spain

Five people died in one such incident in Spain in 2013. Crew members practiced lowering lifeboats into the water from the side of a large ship. Eight crew members participating in the drill while the ship was docked in port were sitting in the lifeboat as it was lowered into the water.

The lifeboat fell nearly 100 feet when a failure occurred, and five of the eight crew members were killed as the boat hit the water and flipped over.

Lifeboat Injuries in Finland

In Finland in 2012, 20 people were injured in a lifeboat accident. Crew members were practicing dropping through a 14-foot chute into lifeboats. The drill was only stopped when subsequent personnel refused to follow their injured crew members in the procedure.

Those who had already completed the chute experienced burns from trying to slow their descent, sprained ankles, and other minor injuries.

An on-site inspector watched from a distance and could not see crew members being injured during the drill. Someone in charge should have been there to ensure workers were training safely and to stop the procedure when it became clear that they were being injured by it.

Lifeboat Accident on Research Vessel

Three crew members suffered injuries on the British research vessel the Sir David Attenborough in 2021. During a drill, the lifeboat containing the crew members fell onto the deck and was then dragged into the water, where it capsized.

An investigation found that maintenance issues caused the accident. The davit that lowers lifeboats became corroded and was not discovered because regular maintenance checks had been stopped. The davit had not been checked since 2019.

Fatalities and serious injuries are too common aboard lifeboats and during drills. Some of these drills cause only minor injuries, such as the incident in Finland, but far too many are more like the one in Spain.

While changing guidelines and requirements should help, improvements are slow to come to this industry, and people working aboard ships with lifeboats are still at risk.

Getting Help if You Have Been Injured During Lifeboat Practice

If you are injured as a crew member working on a drill with lifeboats, you should seek medical treatment immediately and have an official report filed as soon as possible.

Taking these measures and ensuring that you have good records of them will mean that you can fight for the compensation you deserve for your injuries.

You are entitled to compensation when injured on the job, but if your employer refuses, you may have to fight for it. Medical records and a documented accident report will help you make your case if that happens.

When an employer tries to deny your rights and doesn’t want to pay you any or all of what you are owed, you can rely on a lawyer to help you sue them.

Contact a maritime lawyer who can help you file a claim and make your case, and you will have the best chance of recovering damages and getting the money you are owed. When faced with a fight for your rights under maritime law, an experienced attorney is your best ally.