Drill Bits: Enclosed Space Entry

If a person enters a space with insufficient oxygen to support human life and then collapses, they have around four minutes survival time. In some reported cases, rescue attempts have taken up to 20 minutes before retrieving the casualty, which by that point is a dead body.

Time is of the essence. Could your team safely rescue someone from within a tank or the bottom of a cargo hold in such a short time?

As we did with the fire drill articles earlier in this series, we will first give you the ‘drill bits’ – the different elements of the drill. This is to make sure that the crew are familiar with and confident in their actions during a given drill, before bringing them together for a larger scenario-based drill.

Preparation

Split the crew into their emergency response teams and conduct separate training sessions that focus on their specific roles and responsibilities, each led by a responsible officer.

For example, we’ll consider five teams as follows:

De Briefing

Each group should carry out a debrief. Highlight any lessons learned and encourage questions from the team. Don’t forget to highlight what went well and give praise where its due.

For this training it is extremely important to note how to raise the alarm and not to attempt a rescue unaided. Too many seafarers have died trying to “help” a shipmate who has collapsed.

Check that the crew knew their individual duties and who would deputise according to the muster list!

Next time we will look at a full scenario-based rescue from enclosed space drill where we will try out everything learned from the above drill bits.