Maintenance Accident Causes Major Motor Damage on Washington State Ferry Walla Walla

NWCN.com reported that one of the propulsion motors on a Washington State Ferry was severely damaged due to a human error during maintenance. No one was hurt, but an un-named observer said:

“In all my years in the maritime industry I’ve never seen anything like this. It sent chills up my spine because of the potential to kill somebody. I can’t put enough emphasis on how close they came to killing someone.”

A shipyard representative said that a full investigation was underway and made this statement:

“On Sunday, November 4, the propulsion drive motor on the Walla Walla failed.  This failure left the vessel inoperable until the propulsion drive motor or its components can either be repaired or replaced.  We are conducting a full investigation into the incident and probable causes per standard WSF protocol.  We are also working with the manufacturer to trouble-shoot the problem.”

Besides being a serious maintenance accident and quality of work issue, this accident was also a fatality near-miss. That’s just the kind of problem that TapRooT® was designed to look into.

Also, this is the type of problem that proactive use of TapRooT® can prevent and the reason that we created the Best Practices for Reducing Serious Injuries and Fatalities Course to help TapRooT® Users design and implement proactive programs to improve performance.

Also, TapRooT® Users know that they can get even more ideas about performance improvement from industry leaders around the world by attending the 2013 Global TapRooT® Summit. For more Summit information, see:

http://www.taproot.com/products-services/summit

After all, as Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.“