Employees at a multi-billion dollar renewable electricity project were created high fast grenade after the 'catastrophic failure' of a fan of industrial size.
An underground fan, about 2.5 meters in diameter, failed and lost part of his knife on Tuesday morning at Snowy Hydro's 2.0 project, which makes dangerous pieces of metal fly into the workspace.
“The latter incident is an important near-miss that could have led to the killing of employees,” said NSW secretary of the Australian employees, Tony Callinan.
“If someone had been on the path of these grenade shards at high speed, we would discuss fatalities instead of failure of equipment.”
Callinan said that employees of the renewable project were also forced to stop work in January after underground flight rooms, necessary in the case of an underground emergency situation, “turned out to be unusable.”
Safework NSW told Daily Mail Australia that inspectors have made Hydro Snowy with six prohibition messages to stop using unsafe ventilation tans. All the work on the project has stopped until the fans are inspected and cleaned up as safe.
The authority identified two dangerous incidents on the site and emphasized that a crane did not function properly even during the weekend.
An investigation into the failure of the fan led to the discovery that other fans are also at risk. Nobody was injured in the incident.
Snowy Hydro is confronted with six prohibition messages from Safework NSW and has stopped the activity in his besieged renewable project
“These are important security events and it is happiness that no one has been injured,” says Safework NSW Acting Deputy Secretary, Trent Curtin.
Every employee deserves to go to work, knowing that they are in a safe environment where he can expect home every day. '
The trade union requires that all ventilation equipment undergoes an extensive inspection of the original manufacturers before an employee returns to the underground parts of the project.
“The AWU and our members have absolutely no confidence in the ability of the project to manage safety, it is time for some changes at all levels of this project management, also with the customer Snowy Hydro,” Callinan said.
Snowy Hydro has issued a statement about the incident with the ventilation man, which confirms that it will take immediate action.
'Snowy Hydro will search immediately Independent Safety Review and Audit, and will require changes to the leadership of the main contractor Future Generation Joint Venture (FGJV) on the project.
'FGJV will collaborate with Safework NSW to ensure that they are safe, with the aim of gradually restarting.
'Nothing is more important for Snowy Hydro than safety. Recent safety problems at Snowy 2.0 have made it clear that if the customer requires our security role about the activities of FGJV this intervention. '
The Awu said it has 'no confidence' in the ability of the project to manage the safety of its employees
Daily Mail Australia has contacted FGJV for comment.
The renewable project seems to have been plagued by issues long before the ventilation fan fault, including the initial costs for the $ 2 billion project that is $ 12 billion.
The controversial project, which aims to dig the 15 km trip under Kosciuszko National Park, was announced in 2017 by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with construction in 2019.
It was certain in 2023 when a boring machine of $ 150 million 400 tons, called Florence, got stuck.
In February of the same year, employees remotely found the Maden and Caterpillars super project in the food that is supplied by the work location.
