Page 94 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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72 Serious Incident Prevention

Sylvania—In the past, dozens of H. D. Mead’s employees on the 13,000-
acre Wade Plantation had gone fishing on the old dead part of the
Savannah River in that brown, flat-bottom aluminum boat.
Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened.
On Monday, plantation hand Melvin Bates recalls, Norman Scurry
had taken his cousin, Bates wife, fishing in the boat. . . . Norman—de-
scribed by his boss, A.M. Hill, the plantation manager, as a “great fisher-
man”—had caught a mess of bream in the old river. His wife was cooking
the catch on the shore in a clearing beneath moss-laden trees. . . . Some of
the kids wanted to go for a ride in the old boat, which was powered by a
small 3 1/2 horsepower outboard motor.
On Wednesday, Bates waited with others amidst swarming gnats in
the mournful humidity outside the Sylvania Funeral Home as Scurry
viewed for the first time the bodies of his four children and niece, all of
whom drowned Tuesday when that old boat sank in one of the worst boat-
ing disasters in Georgia history.
“We’ve all been out in that boat with our kids,” said Bates, “and noth-
ing ever happened. It goes to show you, you can be looking at death and
don’t see it.”
“I don’t to this minute know what happened,” said Norman Scurry. . . .
“The front of the boat . . . just went straight down. Straight down. . . .”
The 12-foot boat is fine for the old river—which was once part of the
throbbing main channel of the Savannah. . . . But with six persons aboard,
all so comfortable in their surroundings on the frolicsome family outing
that they did not follow simple safety rules, it was a floating disaster.
“He (Norman Scurry) told me he knew better than to put that many
people in a boat at one time,” said Screven County Sheriff George F.
Bazemore, “but he said since it was kids he thought it would be all right.”
Neither Norman Scurry nor the children in the boat were swimmers. 1

Understanding More Complex Risks

Like the after-the-fact awakening to the risks involved in boating, the
chemical industry experienced a period of risk discovery following a 1984
catastrophic incident in Bhopal, India. More than 2,000 people died after a
release of methyl isocyanate from a chemical facility. In Congressional
hearings, the statements by management responsible for the facility echoed
those of individuals affected by the fatal Georgia boating accident.
Although the plant had been operating for seven years, top management in-
dicated they were not adequately informed regarding the potential risks in-
volved with their operation. 2