USS Essex (LHD 2) hosted a Health and Safety Fair September 30, 2016 on Pier 7 of Naval Base San Diego to improve health and general safety awareness.

Usually these goals would be achieved by conducting a safety stand-down, a routinely scheduled event that ensures all Sailors are briefed on the importance of safety, but Lt. Craig David, the ship's Safety Officer wanted to try a different approach.

"Rather than have everyone sit down for a few hours to be lectured on safety like we do at safety stand-downs, we want to interject a small safety spin into the health fair by making ourselves available to touch base on a couple safety topics," said Craig.

Craig explains that safety is often overlooked because Sailors don't take the proper precautions and think that it takes too much time, it's inconvenient, or just don't recognize the hazards at all.

"The biggest challenge in maintaining safety and preventing accidents is convincing everyone to have a safety mindset and to use Operational Risk Management (ORM) in everything they do," said Craig.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Vanessa Bocobo is part of the ship's safety team and educated Essex Sailors on safety during the fair.
"The biggest questions I get asked is about respirators and if personnel need to wear safety glasses and hard hats while they are transiting through the pier," said Bocobo.

Bocobo administers fit tests for respirators and explains that there are Navy instructions for safety requirements during different phases such as when the ship or command is operational or when they are in a maintenance period.

"One of the biggest consequences of not following proper safety procedures is the absence of workers due to injury which can affect the workflow," said Bocobo.

Maintaining a safe environment for Sailors in the workplace can be difficult but it can also be very rewarding.

"The most rewarding thing about being part of the safety team is applying risk management to a different arena than I am accustomed," said Craig. "As aviators, we are inherently a very risk adverse community, it's not that we don't take risk, flying is inherently risky, it's because the consequences of accepting unnecessary levels of risk can be so severe that we are constantly thinking of and analyzing ways of reducing or mitigating risk."

Craig suggests that during Essex's Planned Maintenance Availability (PMA), Sailors should be very cautious and pay very close attention to their surroundings.

"This ship is an unsafe environment just by the nature of work that is happening during PMA, hazards are around each corner and are constantly changing," said Craig. "Everyone must look out for themselves as well as their fellow Sailors and apply the principals of ORM."

Essex is currently conducting a Planned Maintenance Availability at Naval Base San Diego to upgrade and modernize the ship and its systems.


For more news from USS Essex (LHD 2), visit www.navy.mil/.