Worst workplace incident/accident?
Discussion
Europa1 said:
FiF said:
Fewer people across the world attacked by sharks than killed by cattle just in UK.
I'm guessing more people work with cattle in the UK than they do with sharks, so this doesn't surprise me.The scaffolding story reminded me of the Malaysian scaffolder in this video.
Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
TonyRPH said:
The scaffolding story reminded me of the Malaysian scaffolder in this video.
Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
I like how he still has a hard hat on though... that will keep him safe...
Another railway story... we were putting scaffold under a railway bridge near Duisburg (NRW, Germany) and had an approved method of building a tower at ground level & working from that. A clever sod decided it was much easier to climb the railway embankment, walk along the bridge & pass planks down to his buddies underneath. It worked well for the first 5 mins, until the Cologne to Amsterdam train hammered through at 160kph & hit something. The guy had a small ounce of common sence not to walk in the 4ft (space between the rails) but outside them - whilst carrying the plank at 90 degrees to the rail. So the train hit the plank & not the plonker. The driver didn't know though, and called emergency services saying he had hit someone. H&S on German railways in those days wasn't great, but Polizei attendance was plentiful.
I've had people walk put down marker boards in the wrong place, and known incidents of allegedly isolated overhead lines still being live. Communication is key.
The other one was 2 years ago at a trade show (Innotrans) in Berlin. Some Polish guys were building an over the top stand for an Asian mobile phone company. They were moving a tall ladder (30ft+) when it fell & hit a young lad square on his noggin. I thought he was dead, but they sat him up & put a cigarette in his mouth. He walked away, and I'm not sure how. There is little (zero) regard to H&S at that venue. Ho hats, no boots, no hi-vis, no ear protection, no dust masks - despite it being a construction site for a few days in advance of a show.
I've had people walk put down marker boards in the wrong place, and known incidents of allegedly isolated overhead lines still being live. Communication is key.
The other one was 2 years ago at a trade show (Innotrans) in Berlin. Some Polish guys were building an over the top stand for an Asian mobile phone company. They were moving a tall ladder (30ft+) when it fell & hit a young lad square on his noggin. I thought he was dead, but they sat him up & put a cigarette in his mouth. He walked away, and I'm not sure how. There is little (zero) regard to H&S at that venue. Ho hats, no boots, no hi-vis, no ear protection, no dust masks - despite it being a construction site for a few days in advance of a show.
ALawson said:
My first job was working for a local civil engineering company, on the project where were doing the infrastructure a house builder on one of the first parcels of land being developed had a delivery of timber roof trusses delivered to site, they arrived after the tele-handler operator had gone home.
This resulted in an untrained young person offering to off load them for the PM, he then took a short cut of the edge of the ramp on site and rolled the tele-handler, the trusses then stopped the plant turning over. The young lad called to the PM for help who told him not to move, after the PM went to the office to call for help the young lad opened the door on the low side having panicked. The change in CoG caused the tele-handler to roll over crushing him fatality.
We (luckily) has a major injury the following day on our site where the HSE then couldn’t attend as they were investigating the death on the house builder site. We had been using a moxy truck to move trees being cleared with an excavator with a bucket (not the approved tree removal contractor), the returning and reversing Moxy had a single tree trunk still stuck hanging out the rear of it. The excavator driver with his feet propped up on the half glass reading the paper didn’t hear the Moxy returning (maybe due to a broken reversing beacon), the first he knew about it was when a tree truck pinned him to his seat via his groin. I believe he made a full recovery, this was instrumental in me seeking a job with a main contractor.
Incidentally the tree contractor a year later on another job had felled a tree and the attachment to the tractor has stripped all bar one branch from the trunk (leaving a 150-200 sub), the operator then in an excavator tracked over that trunk. Due to it being suspended between two high points either side of a dip, causing the trunk to snap. The weight of the machine track caused the partially snapped trunk to whip up the side of the machine cab, although the cab was fully enclosed in a demolition cage the one branch stub punched a hole through the glass and then came to rest (luckily) just striking the operator on the side of the head. After not answering the phone, he is son who worked for him went to the forest he was working on and found his father still unconscious in the machine. Made an almost full recovery apart from a severed tear duct, which means manually putting drops in his eye now.
I met a chap on Terminal 5 (Matt Gilbert) on virtually his first day in construction, gave him is project briefing, he eventually moved teams 2 or 3 years later. He was fatality killed when some SGB temporary works failed whilst supporting a couple of tonnes of precast concrete up in the air. I think they (him and a chainman) fell about 10-15m into the West Rail box basement. It was a different part of T5 and that has a major effect on me and other, even though it was nothing to do with our sub-project works. HSE prosecuted main contractor and SGB.
A lift engineer was also killed on the same project when working in a pit and a descending lift killed him, again another prosecution.
Whilst working at T5, I stopped on the way home at a double fatality on a RTA on the A40. That was pretty grim, two cars two trees (the trees lost a little bit of bark).
Had a few other incidents over the last 20 years, none really warrant sharing. Although people do seem to like using circular saws and check height, when they hit a hard point in whatever they are cutting there is normally a disk chest/face injury (quite common).
Whilst slightly entertaining, having now got involved in plenty of investigations human behaviour is a fascinating thing once you start delving into it.
I've just gone cross-eyed trying to read this on a computer at work - where's the accident book and who do I claim from?!This resulted in an untrained young person offering to off load them for the PM, he then took a short cut of the edge of the ramp on site and rolled the tele-handler, the trusses then stopped the plant turning over. The young lad called to the PM for help who told him not to move, after the PM went to the office to call for help the young lad opened the door on the low side having panicked. The change in CoG caused the tele-handler to roll over crushing him fatality.
We (luckily) has a major injury the following day on our site where the HSE then couldn’t attend as they were investigating the death on the house builder site. We had been using a moxy truck to move trees being cleared with an excavator with a bucket (not the approved tree removal contractor), the returning and reversing Moxy had a single tree trunk still stuck hanging out the rear of it. The excavator driver with his feet propped up on the half glass reading the paper didn’t hear the Moxy returning (maybe due to a broken reversing beacon), the first he knew about it was when a tree truck pinned him to his seat via his groin. I believe he made a full recovery, this was instrumental in me seeking a job with a main contractor.
Incidentally the tree contractor a year later on another job had felled a tree and the attachment to the tractor has stripped all bar one branch from the trunk (leaving a 150-200 sub), the operator then in an excavator tracked over that trunk. Due to it being suspended between two high points either side of a dip, causing the trunk to snap. The weight of the machine track caused the partially snapped trunk to whip up the side of the machine cab, although the cab was fully enclosed in a demolition cage the one branch stub punched a hole through the glass and then came to rest (luckily) just striking the operator on the side of the head. After not answering the phone, he is son who worked for him went to the forest he was working on and found his father still unconscious in the machine. Made an almost full recovery apart from a severed tear duct, which means manually putting drops in his eye now.
I met a chap on Terminal 5 (Matt Gilbert) on virtually his first day in construction, gave him is project briefing, he eventually moved teams 2 or 3 years later. He was fatality killed when some SGB temporary works failed whilst supporting a couple of tonnes of precast concrete up in the air. I think they (him and a chainman) fell about 10-15m into the West Rail box basement. It was a different part of T5 and that has a major effect on me and other, even though it was nothing to do with our sub-project works. HSE prosecuted main contractor and SGB.
A lift engineer was also killed on the same project when working in a pit and a descending lift killed him, again another prosecution.
Whilst working at T5, I stopped on the way home at a double fatality on a RTA on the A40. That was pretty grim, two cars two trees (the trees lost a little bit of bark).
Had a few other incidents over the last 20 years, none really warrant sharing. Although people do seem to like using circular saws and check height, when they hit a hard point in whatever they are cutting there is normally a disk chest/face injury (quite common).
Whilst slightly entertaining, having now got involved in plenty of investigations human behaviour is a fascinating thing once you start delving into it.
Edited by echazfraz on Tuesday 25th September 12:36
Things have moved on for sure in terms of H and S, I was a YTS aged seventeen at a Freight company near Manchester Airport, I wasnt that keen on the office side but I bloody loved the Fork lift, my training consisted of the van driver saying, this turns it on, this makes it go, this makes it stop, this makes the blades go up and down etc..
So, 17 year old halfwit let loose in a 2 tonne powered vehicle with huge skewers on the front, I used to take all sorts of liberties going too fast, drifting it on a wet floor and generally doing stupid stuff to get objects down off lorries that were a bit over its capacity, like four of us standing on the back to add ballast.
I put the blades through the wall, but the worst was when I hit a block of wood, the bits that separate two sides of a pallet and as they have no suspension it didnt half go flying up in the air, not sure how near it was tipping over but not too far. A warehouseman at another place impaled an Orion Ghia by not being careful, so dangerous if used without care.
So, 17 year old halfwit let loose in a 2 tonne powered vehicle with huge skewers on the front, I used to take all sorts of liberties going too fast, drifting it on a wet floor and generally doing stupid stuff to get objects down off lorries that were a bit over its capacity, like four of us standing on the back to add ballast.
I put the blades through the wall, but the worst was when I hit a block of wood, the bits that separate two sides of a pallet and as they have no suspension it didnt half go flying up in the air, not sure how near it was tipping over but not too far. A warehouseman at another place impaled an Orion Ghia by not being careful, so dangerous if used without care.
Here's one from me:
Me and my C7, you know, a couple of skelps more senior than an X3, were carrying out some smecking in a threshbar. Couldn' believe our FFFFFFFFb9 had actually asked us to go ahead without any fuzzcocks or resetting the gruff.
Anyway, my C7 obvioulsy gets banjaxed by a fraggin right in the gear as soon as we started. Took him PDQ to A&E, past B&Q, H&M, B&M, C&A, M&S and MFI in the JCB (no ABS, PAS, ESP, DPF FFS).
We had to shut the site until 1666 when it all burned down anyway!
Couldn't make it up...
Me and my C7, you know, a couple of skelps more senior than an X3, were carrying out some smecking in a threshbar. Couldn' believe our FFFFFFFFb9 had actually asked us to go ahead without any fuzzcocks or resetting the gruff.
Anyway, my C7 obvioulsy gets banjaxed by a fraggin right in the gear as soon as we started. Took him PDQ to A&E, past B&Q, H&M, B&M, C&A, M&S and MFI in the JCB (no ABS, PAS, ESP, DPF FFS).
We had to shut the site until 1666 when it all burned down anyway!
Couldn't make it up...
I nearly ran myself over once,
jumped out of an automatic car and it was in reverse and not park,
left the engine running and slipped underneath the sills
it was at the tip and someone had just deposited loads of hedge clippings, i slipped and went under the car, it started to go back and i jsut couldnt get any grip,
i was scrabbling away from it as fast as the door was advancing
very scary at the time,
oh and a load of racking fell on the cabin i was in once,
that was an interesting few minutes
jumped out of an automatic car and it was in reverse and not park,
left the engine running and slipped underneath the sills
it was at the tip and someone had just deposited loads of hedge clippings, i slipped and went under the car, it started to go back and i jsut couldnt get any grip,
i was scrabbling away from it as fast as the door was advancing
very scary at the time,
oh and a load of racking fell on the cabin i was in once,
that was an interesting few minutes
TonyRPH said:
The scaffolding story reminded me of the Malaysian scaffolder in this video.
Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
Yep...That one has done the rounds, as you say, keeps his Hard Hat on but wears bugger all else in regards to PPE!! Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
Although, I have a good friend who worked South East Asia for many years and he has told me this is all too common, its a population/corruption thing, there is no problem replacing the deceased Labour and if H&S ever come calling then the brown envelope comes out.
echazfraz said:
Here's one from me:
Me and my C7, you know, a couple of skelps more senior than an X3, were carrying out some smecking in a threshbar. Couldn' believe our FFFFFFFFb9 had actually asked us to go ahead without any fuzzcocks or resetting the gruff.
Anyway, my C7 obvioulsy gets banjaxed by a fraggin right in the gear as soon as we started. Took him PDQ to A&E, past B&Q, H&M, B&M, C&A, M&S and MFI in the JCB (no ABS, PAS, ESP, DPF FFS).
We had to shut the site until 1666 when it all burned down anyway!
Couldn't make it up...
Me and my C7, you know, a couple of skelps more senior than an X3, were carrying out some smecking in a threshbar. Couldn' believe our FFFFFFFFb9 had actually asked us to go ahead without any fuzzcocks or resetting the gruff.
Anyway, my C7 obvioulsy gets banjaxed by a fraggin right in the gear as soon as we started. Took him PDQ to A&E, past B&Q, H&M, B&M, C&A, M&S and MFI in the JCB (no ABS, PAS, ESP, DPF FFS).
We had to shut the site until 1666 when it all burned down anyway!
Couldn't make it up...
echazfraz said:
I've just gone cross-eyed trying to read this on a computer at work - where's the accident book and who do I claim from?!
Quite, I think the planning for T5 was 6.5 deaths or something over the project. I think they worked something like 50 or 60 million man hours with several 1-4m periods "incident" free. I suppose when you work on major projects i.e. £1Bn plus, then there will always be more accidents. Edited by echazfraz on Tuesday 25th September 12:36
Over my almost 20 years the construction industry has gone from killing 60-70 per year in the late 90's to low 40's now. Not great but an improvement, most companies AFR are now all around 0.1 where they used to be much higher (I think when I started joined LOR in 2002/3 it was about 1.2 or something).
The two T5 fatalities can be found on the web easily. From memory Crossrail has killed two so far, 1 utility strike and another SCL adit / tunnel concrete operator, would be interesting to see how many man hours that project has done to date. I know there have been several significant incidents on that project that could have killed people.
Vanordinaire said:
Europa1 said:
FiF said:
Fewer people across the world attacked by sharks than killed by cattle just in UK.
I'm guessing more people work with cattle in the UK than they do with sharks, so this doesn't surprise me.
I have seen a few over the last 20 years, none of them good.
working in a confined space setting up to do some welding. Gas detector not switched on because it had a faulty LEL sensor, tank was leaking. Went to light the torch and that was that. They were scraping him off the walls & ceiling for quite some time.
Several asphyxiated with H2S in buildings & tanks classed as confined spaces with no gas meter or meter disabled so the work could be completed. Better odds here currently at 50% survival rate
Somebody clearing a hot ash chute leaning into it - blockage cleared suddenly and buried them head to waste. He was pulled/dug out in about 1 minute but now looks like Freddie Kruger
Somebody 'guiding' a several tonne lifting hoist into position. Work mates wondering why he had gone quiet...... The unit had trapped his head which had damaged his speech centre so he was unable to call out he was being crushed. Catastrophic brain injury, now a cabbage.
The two that haunt me the most is the contractor that fell through a roof as he was not clipped onto the safety rail. landed about 2ft away from me head first so I was treated to a ring side seat of his head shattering.
Working in some third word s
t hole in the water industry, a young boy got trapped in the water lifting screw & mashed to pieces. He was screening the water at the bottom with a net. The supervisor just found a willing replacement & they carried on!
working in a confined space setting up to do some welding. Gas detector not switched on because it had a faulty LEL sensor, tank was leaking. Went to light the torch and that was that. They were scraping him off the walls & ceiling for quite some time.
Several asphyxiated with H2S in buildings & tanks classed as confined spaces with no gas meter or meter disabled so the work could be completed. Better odds here currently at 50% survival rate
Somebody clearing a hot ash chute leaning into it - blockage cleared suddenly and buried them head to waste. He was pulled/dug out in about 1 minute but now looks like Freddie Kruger
Somebody 'guiding' a several tonne lifting hoist into position. Work mates wondering why he had gone quiet...... The unit had trapped his head which had damaged his speech centre so he was unable to call out he was being crushed. Catastrophic brain injury, now a cabbage.
The two that haunt me the most is the contractor that fell through a roof as he was not clipped onto the safety rail. landed about 2ft away from me head first so I was treated to a ring side seat of his head shattering.
Working in some third word s
t hole in the water industry, a young boy got trapped in the water lifting screw & mashed to pieces. He was screening the water at the bottom with a net. The supervisor just found a willing replacement & they carried on! Edited by shep1001 on Tuesday 25th September 18:19
TonyRPH said:
The scaffolding story reminded me of the Malaysian scaffolder in this video.
Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
The YouTube recommended video for that one is "I believe I can fly" by R Kelly! One slip & that belief will be confirmed or disproved Screenshot from said video in case you've seen it.
Nanook said:
98elise said:
The wheel has not lost any mass.
What happens if it's a wheel on a plane on a conveyor belt?
It hasn't?What happens if it's a wheel on a plane on a conveyor belt?
It's shed a whole car.
The wheel and the car both go their separate ways with the momentum they had before. If that wasn't the case the the car would also accelerate due to the loss of mass (ignoring the fact that it's now scraping on the ground!).
In theoretical terms separating the two has added energy to both sides, which can't happen..
I'm happy to be proven wrong though. Its about 30 years since I've done any theory! I'm pretty sure I've seen this debated on a physics forum. I'll look it up when I get home.
Edited to add....
physics.stackexchange.com/questions/228301/detached-wheel-from-a-moving-vehicle-speed
I'll stop arguing my case now, as it's way off topic
Edited by 98elise on Tuesday 25th September 19:06
shep1001 said:
Working in some third word st hole in the water industry, a young boy got trapped in the water lifting screw & mashed to pieces. He was screening the water at the bottom with a net. The supervisor just found a willing replacement & they carried on!
That’s just awful and inhumant hole in the water industry, a young boy got trapped in the water lifting screw & mashed to pieces. He was screening the water at the bottom with a net. The supervisor just found a willing replacement & they carried on! Edited by shep1001 on Tuesday 25th September 18:19
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