HMS Tireless inquest hears device may have been recycled

Mar 11 2009 by Dan Warburton, The Journal

AN OXYGEN candle which erupted and killed a Wearside submariner 200m below the Arctic ice may have been recycled to cut costs, an inquest heard yesterday.

Operator Mechanic Anthony Huntrod, 20, was trapped below a thick crust of ice following the blast on the HMS Tireless at around 8pm on March 21 2007.

An oxygen device, known as a Scog, erupted and caused the doors to close and buckle, trapping Mr Huntrod and two other submariners in a smoke-filled cabin.

An inquest in Sunderland was yesterday told the device could have been taken from a supply of almost 1,000 oxygen candles found in a Hazardous Waste Store close to the Royal Naval port in Plymouth.

Royal Navy engineer Chris Clark, a member of the armed forces Marine Environment Survivability and Habitability (MESH) project, was responsible for Scogs throughout the fleet.

He agreed to allow 20 tonnes of Scogs from the dump to be taken to the Royal Navy stores in Devonport, for use on submarines.

He told the inquest there was no record of where the Scogs were from or why they had been dumped.

Often different batches would get mixed up as they were moved on and off submarines, he said.

This made keeping track of exactly which Scogs were which very difficult.

Some of those recycled from the dump may have been from a faulty batch he had ordered be recalled, after a fault during the manufacturing process made them unsafe.

Just 90 of the 294 of these Scogs, made by Molecular Products Ltd, had been recovered.

Mr Clark visited the dump on June 27 2006 after he was contacted by a Defra official who said there was almost £750,000 of recyclable Scogs in storage there.