Workplace safety anyone?
March 21st, 2011
|
| Share |
With all the hot air that groups like Greenpeace seem to blow about safety and human health, especially when it comes to industry, one would expect that they might run a decent operation in house. And by “decent” I mean not breaking some very fundamental rules of safety like having gasoline out in the open, in an indoor area right near where you are working with tools that produce sparks.
Well apparently not.
Man Fuel explosion at Greenpeace in Auckland burns man
A man working at a Greenpeace workshop in Auckland has been taken to hospital with severe burns after sparks from an angle grinder caused fuel to explode on a boat he was working on today.
The man, understood to be a contractor, was working on the rigid-hull inflatable boat at a workshop in the Greenpeace offices in Mt Eden, central Auckland, when residual fuel at the bottom of the vessel ignited and exploded on him, Gary Lane, senior station officer at Auckland Central Fire Station, told NZPA.
The man suffered burns to his hands, legs and face and was put under a cold shower by his co-workers to relieve the considerable pain before an ambulance arrived, Mr Lane said.
The explosion had also started a fire on the boat, but this was extinguished by the time fire officers arrived about 3.30pm.
“Petrol’s very volatile and the slightest spark can cause what can be like an explosion,” Mr Lane said.
“Whenever you work around fuel you’ve got to be so careful that you keep sparks away from any kind of fuel, especially petrol because it’s so volatile.”
- NZPA
I honestly do not mean to come off as if I am taking some kind of delight in the suffering of the unnamed man who was reportedly burned.
Still, it would seem that this is a rather telling situation. Greenpeace is unabashedly anti-petroleum and will go so far as to blockade fuel stations at rushhour to try to drive home their message that nobody should ever be using a petroleum product. Still, they seem to have no problem using it themselves.
And if that is not bad enough, they same group that will tell us how horrible everyone else is for lax safety standards will then have so little safety oversight in their own operations as to allow something like this to happen, contractor or not. Is it so much to ask that a group that claims to be so socially responsible actually make sure that the contractors they hire act responsibly?
For that matter, why was there “residual fuel at the bottom of the vessel?” It is fairly common for boats to have some amount of fuel spill or become mixed with the bilge water. Yet groups like Greenpeace will tell us that this is a horrible thing to allow to happen and that it is vital that we go to great lengths to make sure the fuel system is as tight and isolated as possible and that every drop of residual fuel is accounted for and never left to fester and pollute the enviornment.
Not surprisingly this news item was not exactly prominently featured in any media outlets and the organization has not said a word about it.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Just LAME, Misc, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
March 21st, 2011 at 10:31 pm
So we were expecting anything other than rank hypocrisy from them?
Believe it or not my sister once dated one of the founding members back in the day when she lived in Vancouver. They went over to one of the other original member’s apartment, where the found him putting his ex-wife’s vinyl record collection in the oven to melt them into a mass before giving them back to her. This is the type of people that founded that organization.
And no, my sister didn’t last too long with the guy she was seeing.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 12:40 am
A “descent” operation? I know Greenpeace are constantly sinking to lower and lower levels, but…
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 12:54 am
viverravid said:
Noted and corrected.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 2:48 pm
The lack of media play, I suspect, stems from the fact that if it was a newsworthy story every time someone maimed themselves due to their own stupidity, all of the real news would be drowned out by the never-ending stream of stories of men burning down their own houses trying to smoke out the gremlins that live in their attics and whatnot.
Still doesn’t justify Greenpeace’s keeping mum on it, though.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
As a Kiwi I have to say that the contractor has to take some responsibility for being a moron & grinding in the presence of fuel!
Certainly Greenpeace as the employer also has responsibility for ensuring a safe workplace, but I am not sure exactly what the split is – I used to work a lot with grinders a couple of decades ago, and checking the surroundings was something the man with the trigger needed to do even back then. The NZ Dept of Labour will investigate it and prosecute if they feel it is warranted – eg see http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/small-business/hr-law/2277224/Health-safety-fines-in-spotlight
Playing it up as some sign of Greenpeace’s hypocricy is just hyperbole tho IMO – we all know they use petrol driven vehicles – who hasn’t seen them running around in boats like this on the news??
Highlighting 1 industrial accident seems quite trivial compared to the bigger issues that GP screws up on.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 3:53 pm
DV82XL said:
Lucky her.
OT: Is there even any point in allowing those damn trackbacks which almost always seem to be spam?
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Juums said:
I would say it is newsworthy simply because one expects those who continually insist on industry being unsafe and not doing enough to protect against accidents to be held to a very high standard. That does not seem unreasonable to me.
People shoplift from stores all the time but when an off duty police officer is caught shoplifting is it newsworty? I think it is, because it’s reasonable to expect better from them and consider it a greater example of bad behavior than when someone who works at a fast foot joint does.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 6:36 pm
OT:
BraveNewClimate has been locked into read-only allegedly becuase of some problem with wordpress. Lets see if the same peoblem is going on here.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 6:40 pm
No, no similar issues here. The message on BNC is as follows:
We’re experiencing some problems on WordPress.com and we are in read-only mode at the moment. We’re working hard on restoring full service as soon as possible, but you won’t be able to create or make changes to your site currently.
Funny that it’s not affecting this site as well.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 10:14 pm
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Workplace safety anyone? [...]
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2011 at 10:44 pm
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Workplace safety anyone? [...]
Quote Comment
March 23rd, 2011 at 8:59 pm
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Workplace safety anyone? [...]
Quote Comment
March 23rd, 2011 at 10:15 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZc9fwTAz_k
Quote Comment
March 24th, 2011 at 12:50 am
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Workplace safety anyone? [...]
Quote Comment
March 24th, 2011 at 2:50 am
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Workplace safety anyone? [...]
Quote Comment
March 24th, 2011 at 2:50 am
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Workplace safety anyone? [...]
Quote Comment
July 8th, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Wow, this is a very surprising article. I didn’t know this happened. Has GreenPace said anything about it publicly since?
Quote Comment