I took the time to watch the investigation special on the Accident of Jarrod Hampton. If ever there is a cautionary tale to be told! This is a great example of how, in order to save themselves half a million dollars, a company is willing to look the other way and endanger the lives of its employees, resulting in the end, in a far greater cost.
I find it painfully ironic that Paspaley Group’s response to this avoidable tragedy is
“safety is our highest priorityâ€.
It is not! Here is a fact: as long as money is to be made, as long as there are stockholders to answer to, we may say that Safety is our highest priority, but it hardly ever is. Money is the priority and safety can take a back seat as needed to ensure money is never lost. If safety were a priority, we would not have “recommendationsâ€, we would not have “standards†or “guidelinesâ€; we would have rules and laws to abide by and that’s that. Rules and laws, unfortunately can be painful (and costly) for both sides. So often we wait until absolutely necessary to change and improve things.
Safety is not always solid and provable. How do you explain to stockholders, company owners and CEOs that, hey, it cost you this much money this year, or, you were not able to lower cost or save money, but you DID save lives, you did not hurt anyone because you did not cut costs! Often the question will be how can you prove this? I find that here, even in one of the highest, most stringently controlled environments, we are sometimes guilty of this as well. How can I prove that my work is successful and that it was money well spent, if the last time you cut my budget and increased the risk of an activity by waiting until it was a must do, instead of a regularly scheduled task no one got hurt?
Example: I pushed for us to clean out a vault (a 26x26x38 triangular area 35 feet deep, w 30 feet of it underwater) BEFORE it gets so full of sand, silt, debris, mussels etc that it becomes a hazard to the diver pumping out the stuff. The only way in is down a manhole wide enough to let only the thinnest divers we have fit when fully dressed. I stressed that if we perform this task once a year (i.e. regularly) , the debris won’t be piled up too high and thus lessen the risk, (not to mention time and cost). Yet we wait until it becomes a “do this or else†task and we have over 24’ of debris piled up and engulfment and shifting becomes highly likely (not to mention the near zero visibility in this area). We successfully cleaned it our this year and so guess what? We will continue to “save†money by just waiting until it is full to do it. But I keep nagging at them that we need to stick to the regular scheduling of this task, that this is no way to operate, assuming higher risk and then acting like it is an incentive to continue like this when nothing bad happens. Hard for some to understand the concept when they have stockholders to answer to.
Back to Paspaley: Safety is NOT their highest priority. If it were, they would have done all they could to keep their experienced divers from walking out instead of opting to pocket an extra half mill by taking it out of the pockets of those who worked for it. If it were their priority, you would not have a guy saying “You can’t stop the boat. You just don’t stop the boat.†And I don’t know about you, but throwing an air hose into the water with no strength member to protect the strain placed on that air hose when a diver can’t hang on or happens to let go of the other line seems very unsafe to me. Especially when it is mentioned they do not have buoyancy devices and no harness, no way to communicate. Especially if you are doing this nine times a day! (not to mention the questionable logic of throwing a diver in the water nine times a day under those conditions). I express the following knowing many will not side with me or agree, but face it: there is always a little tiny bit of pride when someone talks about how difficult their job is, even when this means it is unsafe. It is human nature (notice I say human and not gender specific) to take pride in challenges and hardship overcome (“I walked barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways…†ring any bells?), but (yes, I dare say it) it is a little more so men oriented jobs. The pride of being tougher than the rest, standing above average. I never deny that this is a tough man’s job. But that does not mean it should not be made safer, and a culture of “we just don’t stop the boat†is plain sick, why not be a tough, smart bunch of men instead? With a combination of this mentality and the money loving society we have become, we set up for fatalities. Jobs like these attract the adventurous, challenge loving tough guys who are less likely to speak up (though there are more and more who do speak up, now a days) and thus companies can wring the blood, sweat and tears out of them and make more money than if they tried to make things (egads!) easier and safer.
Here’s another one by the Pearling Association, claiming, as usual that they haven’t had fatalities because the last two don’t count. Those last two fatalities being:
1) a cardiac arrest (gasp! haven’t we heard this suspicious excuse one too many times?)
2) struck by a propeller trying to free a tangled mooring line (how this is not diving related boggles the mind… but, technicalities, technicalities, they say).
The Pearling association proudly states that there is a recompression chamber in town yet the accident report mentions the boat took 8 hours to get to town. Let’s hope that they have better plans and these include helicopters or something to get them to the chamber if needed.
62 divers lost their life in 2010. 65 in 2011 and over 15 as of June 2012.
How many more before we are able to make a difference?
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