Three crew members of a barge near Mumbai coast died on Friday night after inhaling toxic gas. Two other members of the crew were taken to hospital and is undergoing treatment, reported Hindustan Times. They were rescued by the Coast Guard.
The barge, Orion II, is owned by Shree Krishna Agencies. It was unloading a cargo of wheat from the MV Thor Endeavour from Singapore. The gas leak was reported by the Endeavour crew. The Coast Guard’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre officials, who were contacted, said the level of the sludge tank in the barge had gone up dangerously an hour before their team reached the spot. The sludge tank collects and disposes of wet waste. While the process is done automatically in advanced vessels, in low-cost barges, it is done manually by crew members.
The incident took place when the crew members entered the tank to manually dump the waste. “Jayant Chaudhary first entered the ballast tank to fit a de-flooding pump and fell unconscious on inhaling the poisonous gas. As Chaudhary did not return, Bhosle went to check on him. He too did not report back, so Son Koch went there and he too fell unconscious,” Yogesh Bhosale, the engine driver, told The Indian Express.
The investigators said they did not follow the protocol of using a blower to get rid of the poisonous gases, nor did they use any safety equipment. “We will wait for a report into the mishap to be completed before initiating action. We will need to understand how the levels in the sludge tank rose, why the crew did not have safety equipment and who is responsible for the incident,” said Dyaneshwar Chavan, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone II.
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