FEATURES

Tankers and Fall Arrest

A client recently approached Bomac in relation to a fall arrest system required over a twin loading bay for tankers. Our customer already had in place a guard rail that would restrain employees from fall between the mezzanine floor and the tanker. However, their problem was the company serviced a series of non-specific tankers and required flexibility and ease of movement to cover a range of heights and in addition they required two persons per fall arrest system.

For a relatively short fall distance the deflection of the rail/wire must be taken into consideration . In the instance of a wire rope system this would not be conceivable for a single person user as the bay is approximately 14m long with only one support between spans. Add to this a second user and should one person have an incident the second person would be drawn down the wire rope to the first person who is already in difficulty. In such an instance this would make retrieval of the employees onerous and would require a secondary retrieval system to be instigated. Bearing in mind time is of the essence in a rescue situation this is not a good scenario. The pendulum effect of such a fall should also be taken into account. This is when the person who has fallen swings laterally and as they fall may injure themselves by hitting various solid objects on their descent.