Three Workers Dead Within Confined Space Aboard Barge Loading Scrap Metal [Freeport, Bahamas – 27 July 2021]
![Three Workers Dead Within Confined Space Aboard Barge Loading Scrap Metal [Freeport, Bahamas – 27 July 2021]](https://www.blueoceana.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/images.jpeg)
Three workers that were apparently assigned to trim and clean out the bottom of a barge’s hold that had been loading scrap steel at a dock located just North of Freeport’s container terminal, were the victims of a classic “one-after-another” suffocation set of events. Their deaths occurred at the City’s Service, Ltd. dock, on the afternoon of 27 July 2021.
Local media accounts (See below) list the name of one of the workers, David Dorvile, 47, a Bahamian native of Haitian origin, and relate that the other two workers were, respectively, U.S. and Dominican citizens.
We understand that one of the workers climbed down into the barge, which was already loaded with a substantial amount of scrap steel cargo, and succumbed to an oxygen deficient atmosphere within the barge’s hold. Checking on his companion, another of the workers descended into the barge where he, too, succumbed to the oxygen deficient atmosphere. The third worker made the same error and suffered an identical fate.
It can only be surmised that the scrap metal stripped the oxygen out of the barge’s hold and presented an atmosphere that could not support the lives of the three workers.
Links To Media Accounts:
