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Near Miss Stories: I have another near miss story I wanted to share. “We had to lift an H frame mount up to put our CDMA next to our LTE antenna on the point of a tophat on a 250 ft guyed tower. The H frame alone weighed about 250-300 lbs without antennas. Rigging plan was to lift H frame with mast pipes and then put the CDMA and LTE antennas on afterward. Being at the top of the tower, we had no headroom. The CM said to use one of their in-house made rooster heads. We questioned it, but the safety manager, operations manager, and CM said it would work. We rigged the tower with our rooster head into an existing antenna mast pipe. Instead of playing it safe, the crew lead added a nose bag half full of angle adapters and filled up the rest of the way with 3 ways, a sunsight aat, topped off with 2 nose bags full of 1 5/8″ snap ins. So at this point the total load weight we figured was around 350-400 lbs. The green guy on the ground was tagging using a munter hitch to get the load around one guy wire. As the load was being raised up to us, the boy who was tagging put a slight amount of tag on and got the load around the guy wire. The load finally got up to us and right as we went to put our hands on it the rooster head snapped, dropping the load onto the first guy wire below us. The load rode the guy wire about half way down, flipped over, slammed the next guy wire below it, and rid that guy wire about 1/4 of the way to the anchor head where it fell off the guy wire and hit the ground. The tower was shaken violently, me and the other guy up top bolted for the ground. We got down, the owner showed up on site and said that this will never happen again. Come Monday morning during our weekly safety meeting, the CM, operations manager, and safety manager all concluded that what almost got us killed was the tag. They said too much pressure was applied to the tag and that’s what caused the rooster head to snap. They would not accept the fact that they were using an unapproved rigging device with no load rating. To this day, 2 months later, they still say the tag is what did it.” Good story!
Original post here.
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Drugs: I have one more feedback note that is a follow-up to the drugs, “OK, the drug topic is very strong to me. I have a daughter that is 19 and went through a drug treatment program for, yeah you guessed it, pot. Yes the non addictive drug, that can be detected for 90 days… blah blah. Well guess what. It is tested, and there is acceptable ranges and different levels for time elapsed. Some factors that will change this though is frequency of use. Somebody that uses it more frequently will test positive at higher levels through urinalysis. Hair follicle tests are more accurate, and becoming more prevalent. These tests are more accurate, and of course more expensive.”
Original post here.
I also looked up a past case. All of you asked about how pot will affect the outcome of a case. If you go to http://www.propublica.org/article/cell-tower-fatalities (released in 2012 and mentions Wally Reardon several times) you will see that Jay Guilford, the young man who died doing an AT&T install in 2008, did indeed test positive for marijuana in his system. To quote, “Under policies provided by Phoenix of Tennessee, Pierce received $200,000 in life insurance, but was denied worker’s compensation because an autopsy showed Guilford had recently smoked marijuana. Lawyers advised Pierce not to sue because of the drugs”. The point I am trying to make is that he did get his life insurance, but they could have gotten more and perhaps maybe they would have found fault with the process. He was making $10/hour. He worked for All Around Towers, (now out of business) who worked for General Dynamics who worked for AT&T. My point is that if they find anything in your system, it changes the outcome.
I also got some feedback about how I don’t know anything about pot, well, that is true, and I only know what I read. I am told I am against potheads – that’s not true, I am only trying to point out what happens when things go bad. I hope nothing bad ever happens to you, so please, prove to me that it doesn’t matter and stay safe. Prove to me that you know better and be the best at hazard prevention you can be. If you can do that and stay alive for the next 10 years on a tower, then call me anything you like, just remain alive and well. More links, http://video.pbs.org/video/2237737729/.
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Whistle blower information:
http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=330216
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2011-0540-0001