Timing, Luck Lead to Citations in Ship Fire

OSHA officials said it was a combination of timing and luck that led to a long list of violations during an inspection of an Ohio shipyard after a March 2024 fire aboard a ship was being prepared for the summer season.
The incident occurred aboard the Cuyahoga, an 81-year-old vessel that is Canada’s oldest vessel on the Great Lakes.
The vessel was in its winter lay-up when a fire broke out on March 15 while work was underway at the shipyard in Ashtabula, Ohio.
The U.S. Coast Guard was involved in the response along with fire departments from the city and country. The crew was all evacuated without injury.
OSHA determined the fire began while a worker used welding equipment to remove paint in the vessel’s hold. However, most of the crew were on lunch break, avoiding the danger of the fire trapping them below decks.
OSHA cited South Marine Systems of Westlake for 15 serious violations and one other-than-serious violation and proposed $164,540 in penalties.
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The U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center (USACRC) has overhauled its Workplace Safety website to help both service members and civilians navigate the Army’s complex landscape of diverse operational environments, advanced technologies and stringent regulatory requirements.
Among the changes is a streamlining of what has previously been considered a difficult task of navigating the Army’s SOH, or safety and occupational health, program management, consolidating a large range of resources in different category sets
The site continues to be the first stop for researching safety issues, references and content on program management, and Army and OSHA requirements.
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A truck driver was illegally fired by CRH subsidiary W-L Construction & Paving Inc. for reporting legitimate safety issues, the Department of Labor (DOL) has determined.
After breaking a tooth on his way to work in July 2023, the unnamed driver told his supervisor when he got there that he needed to leave due to his dental emergency.
That was the start of a series of medical problems that presented work safety issues, culminating in his firing for a range of related attendance infractions in October 2023.
OSHA said three of those 10 infractions were related to safety issues and the driver’s protected refusals to drive.
It also said that though the employer supposedly has a policy calling for termination after three consecutive absences or no-shows without proper notification, it does not consistently enforce the policy.
OSHA has ordered the employer to pay back wages with interest as well as compensatory and punitive damages.
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