Workshop / Workplace Accidents & Safety

[tuco]

A friend of mine was using a mini digger a few years ago, while tracking through a narrow gap between two shipping containers he put his head out the cab door to check the clearance just as the right hand track went over a block, the machine tilted and crushed his head between the digger and container, luckily he was working next to where an air ambulance is based, so was in hospital very fast. His face and head had to be rebuilt with metal plates and screws, I saw him about a year after it happened and he looked a bit different to how he looked before, but you could not tell his head had been rebuilt, an amazing piece of cosmetic surgery.

 

[CALGACUS03]

When I first started reading this thread it reminded me of a story that was on the local news when I was a kid (therefore, probably, BBC1 North East). It concerned a farmer who had an arm ripped off by a piece of machinery and then walked over a mile home carrying his severed arm, knocked on his farmhouse door (hmm, I wonder with which arm?) until his wife answered and was then rushed to the RVI in Newcastle to have it re-attached.

I naturally Googled for for the story but instead found this:

Man walks a mile with severed arm

Almost the identical story, from a similar year (1983), but in totally the wrong part of the country. Could be that I remembered it incorrectly, or maybe there were multiple incidents of auto-appendage-transportation going on among farmers in the early '80s.

Farmers do seem to be a stoic breed:

UK Farmer cuts off arm with penknife

<tongue firmly in cheek>Of course, if that latter case had happened in America, they'd have made a film about it</tongue firmly in cheek>

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Having worked nights for years. I used to be of the opinion that you certainly never slept on the job. Over the years though when the stories of staff after nights crashing their cars , bikes etc, started to become more common, I encourage people to have a sleep now.

As I often say in 50 years they'll look back at shiftwork and think we were all insane.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

A distant colleague of mine had a lot of time off work to look after her partner after he had an accident on his farm. Now, I don't know if this is true, it sounds like it's been embellished, but the story is that he fell out of his tractor and became impaled on some sort of spiky thing on the vehicle, which carried on moving and finished ploughing the field as it was on some sort of GPS-driven autopilot. With him still flapping around attached it. It was until hours later that someone found him.

 

[feinman]

These sound like really bad ways to go. I had a good friend who told me that his friend was operating a mulching / shredder machine and was feeding branches into it when his shirt sleeve got caught up in it --it shredded his arm and pulled it off at the shoulder. :-(
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/05/oregon-worker-dies-after-falling-into-meat-grinder/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9360076/teen-dies-sausage-meat-grinder-hand-caught-philippines/

 

[feinman]

When I was a kid I was at a Barnum & Bailey circus with my mother; one of the aerial acrobats missed a rope and fell and died on the ground in front of us. Very sad.

 

[escargot]

When I was a kid I was at a Barnum & Bailey circus with my mother; one of the aerial acrobats missed a rope and fell and died on the ground in front of us. Very sad.

What a terrible accident.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Acrobats on a high trapeze normally work with a net below, but sometimes they can miss the net or bounce off it.
Tragic.

 

[feinman]

My Friend and I used to make fireworks when I was a kid, and we had a lot of chemicals at the time --mostly to make flashpowder. We talked the science teacher into allowing us to show the class what flashpowder was, unfortunately.. We assembled outside of the hall outside of the building on a lawn. We had a very small amount of flashpowder in a piece of a plastic straw with a piece of flashpaper for a fuse. It would only have made a small flash and been harmless. We tried to light the fuse but it wouldn't properly light.. it was a sunny day and the cropped grass was yellow and dry and a couple piece of the grass were on fire (just a flame smaller than a lighter), but my friend did not see that. Suddenly he produced a beaker of flashpowder and said he was going to just pour a small pile we could toss a match on. My lasat words to him were "Don't you idiot!" as I watched him pour powder from the beaker onto an open flame. there was a big explosion. I got tossed back several feet and couldn't hear. Because the powder was loose and in glass we didn't get blown up. Instead when smoke cleared my friend was in same position but all black with as silly grin --Just like Wile E. Coyote... But blood began to trickle from glass wounds on arms etc. His body shielded me from bits of glass --I Didn't get hit by a single piece. He was taken away by ambulance is fine today, but has scarring. We stopped communicationg after event --parents and school etc. probably very pissed off....

 

[feinman]

Luckily most of the students had filtered back into school when explosion happened ---it sucked the drapes out through the open library windows and people in school thought plane had crashed.

Roosevelt Jr. High, Eugene, OR

 

[escargot]

Someone my mother knew lost her husband in a horrific farm accident. He wasn't a farmer, he was a civil servant whose job included inspecting silage containers.

Story goes that it was last thing on a Friday, he was after his dart and he rushed things.

You're supposed to climb up the ladder and loosen the lid, taking care to allow gases to disperse before leaning over the open top to look inside.

Instead he whipped the lid off and stuck his face inside.

The escaping gases exploded, taking his head with them. His horrified assistant saw it fly skyward and then descend to land with a thud in the field.

It was all over the local papers and taught me that safety procedures are there for a reason!

 

[feinman]

Someone my mother knew lost her husband in a horrific farm accident. He wasn't a farmer, he was a civil servant whose job included inspecting silage containers.

Story goes that it was last thing on a Friday, he was after his dart and he rushed things.

You're supposed to climb up the ladder and loosen the lid, taking care to allow gases to disperse before leaning over the open top to look inside.

Instead he whipped the lid off and stuck his face inside.

The escaping gases exploded, taking his head with them. His horrified assistant saw it fly skyward and then descend to land with a thud in the field.

It was all over the local papers and taught me that safety procedures are there for a reason!

That's really terrible!

 

[escargot]

That's really terrible!

Must admit, people were joking about it at the time. 'I can see your' ouse from'ere! ' and so on.

 

[pandacracker]

When I was a student in Glasgow, someone in my year, from Hamilton, told me a story about an accident that was meant to have happened in one of the steel works.

I don't know how but a man tumbled into a vat of molten metal but managed to grab hold of something. This meant that only his bottom half was submerged. The colleague first at the scene, instead of hauling him out, released his grip and dropped the man completely in.

It was explained that the workers knew if they pulled him out he'd die anyway because his innards would fall out so...

Sounds like an urban myth to me but as I was writing this I remembered a comment from an old fisherman who was a guide at the Grimsby Trawler museum. He said fishermen were told if they fell into the freezing water during a storm the best thing to do was to take a big gulp of water and swim down.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Sounds like an urban myth to me but as I was writing this I remembered a comment from an old fisherman who was a guide at the Grimsby Trawler museum. He said fishermen were told if they fell into the freezing water during a storm the best thing to do was to take a big gulp of water and swim down.

For a quicker death?

 

[Tempest63]

A buddy of mine, many years ago, was first at the scene when a piece of heavy plant overturned and collapsed on a construction site. The driver was trapped in the wreck and had no pulse so my buddy leant through the frame of the cab and administered mouth to mouth and tried to give the guy CPR in the chair. When the emergency services arrived and took over, it transpired that the guy had, literally, been cut in half...absolutely no way he could have survived.

 

[Tempest63]

A distant colleague of mine had a lot of time off work to look after her partner after he had an accident on his farm. Now, I don't know if this is true, it sounds like it's been embellished, but the story is that he fell out of his tractor and became impaled on some sort of spiky thing on the vehicle, which carried on moving and finished ploughing the field as it was on some sort of GPS-driven autopilot. With him still flapping around attached it. It was until hours later that someone found him.

Agriculture has a much higher accident rate per 100,000 people than construction these days. As a construction safety professional it pleases me in one way that our graft and hardworking means we are no longer the worst, but nobody should go to work to be injured or worse, wherever they work or whatever they do!

 

[pandacracker]

For a quicker death?

Yes.

If I understood correctly it was what an experienced fisherman would do, the danger to the other fisherman if they tried a rescue would be too great.

 

[Tempest63]

One of the worst that happened on a site I was on, was a young 18 yo electrician getting stuck on the incoming High Voltage incoming feed...when he was his Dads apprentice. I saw him wheeled out in a body bag whilst his Dad was, quite understandably, inconsolable. Horrible day that I’ll never forget.
We thrive on black humour in our industry...you learn to laugh at the most inappropriate things knowing the worst may be waiting around the corner for you.

 

[Mythopoeika]

My Mum has a friend who used to run a successful cleaning and facilities management company. Years ago, they had a young man working for them who was practically a member of the family. One evening, he went into an empty office building to do some cleaning alone. The place had a false floor and some parts of the floor were removed, exposing some partially-done wiring (electricians had left it mid-job).
He grabbed a cable to move it out of the way, only to find exposed live wires. The wires burned into his hand as he was thrashing about all over the place. He couldn't pull the cable off with his other hand, so by sheer will and grit he used his teeth to pull the cable off his hand.
Lucky to survive. Badly burned and in shock, he drove to A and E himself.
Can't remember what happened after that, but I think the electricians got sued.

 

[Tempest63]

Can't remember what happened after that, but I think the electricians got sued.

And so they should!

 

[Naughty_Felid]

For a quicker death?

No to enjoy the scenery

 

[Mythopoeika]

No to enjoy the scenery

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

A buddy of mine, many years ago, was first at the scene when a piece of heavy plant overturned and collapsed on a construction site. The driver was trapped in the wreck and had no pulse so my buddy leant through the frame of the cab and administered mouth to mouth and tried to give the guy CPR in the chair. When the emergency services arrived and took over, it transpired that the guy had, literally, been cut in half...absolutely no way he could have survived.

Hemicorporectomy.

Funny what words stick in your mind. Wrote an article for work that included the word a few years back. It was a piece explaining the list of physical conditions that a change in the law meant Police Officers could now declare a person dead without calling in a medical professional.

A very short list of injuries made the list, and that was one of them. The only other one I can remember off the top of my head was decapitation.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

could now declare a person dead without calling in a medical professional.

LiveLeak used to feature a lot of Hemicorporectomy videos. Now I've learned the word, I might as well use it!





Horrid memory ahead . . .











People, kindly, giving water to half-a-motorcyclist on the road; pretending not to watch to see where it would come out . . .


I don't think I could deal with LiveLeak these days!

 

[Krepostnoi]

The only other one I can remember off the top of my head was decapitation.

Whereas the victim remembers it, however briefly, off the top of their neck...