Alert 06 – 02 Safety Retracting Lifeline Blocks and Rotating Machinery
WHAT HAPPENED:
Recently, an employee was fatally injured due to interference between his fall protection equipment and the rotating head atop the annular Blowout Preventer (BOP). Specifically, the employee hooked the Safety Retracting Lifeline (SRL) to his harness and walked laterally across an elevated catwalk to a location where the rotating control device (rotating head) was between the employee and the anchor point of the SRL block. This apparently allowed the line to become entangled in the rotating control device (see photograph).