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Author
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Topic: I've had two accidents in three days.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 02-13-2008 03:22 PM
This obviously isn't my week. I've gone 18 years in my present job without having a reportable accident; as far as I can remember I don't think I had one in the 12 years of the previous job. In the four years before that I once fell down some steps.
On Monday this week I had to visit an old school building which we are taking over for three years while some major building work takes place at our main building. We were looking at the network infrastructure which is still in place to see how much of it we could use, and what upgrades we would have to make. Above the main central corridor there is a low passageway, where various services run. There are a number of concrete beams, protected with foam, running across this. I managed to avoid all of these, but then bashed my head on the low doorway coming out.
This morning we had some contractors visit the main building to find routes for the new fibre cables which are being installed to our new server room at the opposite end of the building. Due to the entire building being gutted and refurbished over the next few years it was decided that the fibre runs from one end of the building to the other would be run over a roof, rather than over the second floor corridor, as the old ones were. That bit was simple, but at the West end of the building it was difficult to find a route from that roof into a service riser that they need to run in. I was going round with the contractors, looking at possible routes. We went into the water tank rooms, thought we had found a route alongside a lift machine room, but then we hit a problem with that. We squeezed around two sides of the water tanks, through a door into a roof space full of fan plant, out through another door onto a flat roof, along that roof, in through another door into another roof space full of fan plant, sounds like the bearings on the fans are totally shot, but that's not my problem; the plant's all being replaced anyway. We looked down another riser from that roof space, and found a route for the new fibre which was acceptable to the College, the cabling contractors, the main contractors, the Health & Safety people etc. Fine, that was settled, I could get on with my work.
The person from my department who does most of the dealing with contractors was out this morning, dealing with some cabling work at the temporary building. When he got back I took him round the building to show him the route which had been chosen. We went into the water tank room, walked alongside the tanks, taking care as we climbed over some large pipes, and then past a huge riser, which we didn't fall down. We turned the corner, and had to squeeze between the tanks, and a very large duct going to some of the fan plant. I went to climb over a concrete beam supporting the talks, my foot slipped off the edge of the beam, and I went flying, hitting my head on something, I'm not sure what, there are lots of pipes, valves, ducts beams etc. that it could have been. Lots of blood, but I don't think any permanent damage done. A first-aider from our department cleaned the wound, and then took me to the NHS drop-in centre just down the road. They are dealing with a crisis, so I have to wait two hours to be seem. I don't like the idea of stiches, and they decide that it isn't necessary. Consider Steri-strip, sort of sticky paper strips used to hold a wound together, but decide to use glue. This is a new one on me, but it seems it's quite common to use it on small wounds now. Take my blood pressure, and comment that it's high.
I've reported it to the health & safety officer, I'm probably going to get into trouble over it because I wasn't wearing a hard hat. I doubt that it would have made any difference, the way I fell the hat would have come off and been the other side of the room before my head hit anything.
At least I know what I did wrong, I'm normally very careful then I have to go anywhere where there are hazards like that, but I made the same mistake that I made on Monday. I'm normally on my own, but in both cases I had somebody with me. I was talking to them about the work to be done, and I wasn't paying attention to the hazards as much as I should have been. I know about them, I've stepped over the same beam several times in the past without problems. That will teach me to be more careful in future, won't it.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-13-2008 04:30 PM
It's the same old story: familiarity breeding contempt, combined with never having experienced an actual incident before. I would never, for a nanosecond, contemplate handling a xenon bulb without wearing full protective gear: I suspect, because I've seen one blow up (or more accurately, heard one blow up and then seen the aftermath when I opened the lamphouse) and can vividly imagine what it would do to me if one exploded in my unprotected hands. But on the other hand, we had an email come round last week warning that failure to evacuate the building when the fire alarm went off is a disciplinary offence. The need for that email was because there have been a spate of false alarms recently (builders + blowtorches + smoke detectors = lots of false alarms), as a result of which many lecturers were simply ignoring the alarms and carrying on with their classes. I call it the electronic boy crying wolf syndrome. But I'll bet you a pint at Bradford that none of those lecturers have ever had to evacuate a building which really was on fire.
I'm in America at the moment (guess I should amend the profile to read '569 miles west of Dallas', if only for the next four days!), and on the flight over on Saturday we hit some quite impressive turbulence over Nova Scotia and Quebec. Not just the odd bump or two - enough to knock the G & T out of my hand, and certainly enough to not want to be walking about! I was in an exit row seat opposite a flight attendant's jump seat when the captain made an announcement telling everyone to sit down and belt up ASAP, cabin crew included. A couple of minutes later some moron got up to go to the loo - then two or three others followed her lead and did likewise, forming a queue. I asked the flight attendant opposite me how she managed to keep her temper when passengers started behaving like that. She smiled and replied, 'Whoever's gonna to be carted off this airplane on a stretcher, it ain't gonna be me!'.
Anyhow, glad to hear that the accidents turned out to be relatively minor ones, and I hope you heal up soon.
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