The crane collapse accident at Geoje shipyard of Samsung Heavy Industries yesterday has so far led to the death of six workers with another 22 listed as injured.
Two cranes collided at the shipyard around 2:50pm yesterday, causing one crane to fall onto an oil platform under construction for French energy giant Total.
The project includes an integrated, fixed production facility and a floating storage and offloading vessel, and was scheduled for delivery in 2018.
“It’s too early to say what would be the consequences for delivering the platform, but for the time being all work at the yard has been stopped and the investigation is ongoing,” said Leif Harald Halvorsen, a spokesperson of Total.
“As we have not received any verified information from our main contractor, we cannot give any more information from our side on the number of killed or injured in the crane accident,” Halvorsen said.
Kim Hyo-seop, vice president at Samsung Heavy Industries, today apologised at a press conference on behalf of the company’s president and CEO Park Dae-young, who was on a business trip to Houston, Texas.
“I would like to express my sincerest sympathy and apology to the bereaved families and to those who suffered injuries. I take full responsibility for the incident and we will thoroughly disclose the cause of the accident,” the statement from Park said, adding that he planned to visit the shipyard Tuesday evening to investigate matters himself.
The local police said they would start investigations on the compliance of security regulations at the shipyard. The search and rescue operations are still ongoing.
