ESPERANCE PORT — SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL
INCIDENTS
436. Hon COLIN de GRUSSA to the Leader of the House
representing the Minister for Ports:
I refer to the answer provided to
question without notice 416 asked yesterday by me.
For
each of the reportable safety incidents recorded at the port of Esperance
between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021 —
(a) what was that
nature of the incident;
(b) were there
any lost-time injuries; and, if so, what was the nature of the injuries and
what was the quantum of hours lost;
(c) were any of
the safety incidents the result of conduct or activities of contracted service
providers; and, if so, can the minister please specify the service provider;
and
(d) what action
was taken against the service provider, or their personnel, referred to in (c)?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I
thank the honourable member for some notice of the question. I just point out
that I have a correction to make to one of the numbers in the answer to
the question the member asked yesterday, and I will do that at the end of
question time.
(a) The incidents
concerning iron ore were a conveyor bearing fire; a contractor tripping on an
iron ore cleaning vacuum hose and hurting their lower back, with a lost-time
injury; a port employee having a medically treated injury after hurting their
shoulder while adjusting a conveyor belt drift; and a port employee having a medically
treated injury—a neck and shoulder injury—as a result of
cleaning blocked conveyor chutes.
There were two incidents concerning
sulphur. One was the ignition of sulphur around a sweeper truck, with the fire rapidly extinguished,
resulting in a port employee with a one-day precautionary LTI due to
potential smoke inhalation. The second was a rolled ankle injury on the deck of
a sulphur vessel, with an MTI to a port employee.
(b) There were
two LTIs: a person who tripped on an iron ore cleaning vacuum hose and hurt
their lower back, resulting in 59 days lost time; and a sulphur ignition around
a sweeper truck, with the fire rapidly extinguished, resulting in an employee
with a one-day precautionary LTI due to potential smoke inhalation.
(c) Yes; refer to
the answers to (a) and (b).
(d) The following action was taken: for the person who
tripped on the iron ore cleaning vacuum hose and hurt their lower back,
the port conducted a full review of the contractor's safety management
systems and issued actions to be completed from the event, and the corrective
actions were resolved. For the incident involving sulphur igniting around a sweeper
truck, with the fire rapidly extinguished, which resulted in an employee with a
one-day precautionary LTI due to potential smoke inhalation, the port issued a stop-work
authority until the contractor satisfied the port's conditions for
operating in the sulphur shed, and the corrective actions were resolved.