[CQ-Contest] Tower safety

[Edward Sawyer]

Jim, Also with all due respect, these are all very serious issues that have nothing to do with body harnesses and free climbing.  Failure analysis deals with the direct cause. 

Issue one - don’t be on a tower all day.  Separate out work and know your physical limits.  Don’t climb alone.
Issue 2 - Be 100% sure what tower you are climbing.
Issue 3 - Job specific, don’t let a project take down the tower you are on.

The response of hanging up you current belt does not add to the safety of the three items listed.

I have no objection to improving safety generically.  I applaud you for doing it and think it’s a good idea.  But the action provides no increase in safety for the three listed items.

We all want to do feel good things that are in fact good overall.  But if you are going to draw specific examples of items to solve.  We need to relate the action taken with the item being solved.

Guys - I want a good relation dialog to improve safety.  It helps us all to increase safety. But saying - my action will be to buy a better climbing harness does not improve safety for virtually all of the discussed items so far.

Ed  N1UR

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim George [mailto:n3bb at mindspring.com] 
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2019 6:50 AM
To: Edward Sawyer; rjairam at gmail.com; James Cain
Cc: CQ-Contest Reflector
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Tower safety

With all due respect, the discussion on climbing w/out the OSHA-approved climbing harness (Personal Protection Equipment) and/or taking any sort of risk by free climbing or being unattached at times is just foolish. You will be OK until you are not. Then you could have an accident. The data are clear.

Over forty years of tower work on my towers and those of friends, I have had three occasions where problems occurred. Once, a fellow climber passed out at 140 feet due to the length of time on the tower and resultant muscle fatigue and blood circulation; once when the base of an old sixty foot tower we were taking down, unknown to us was rusted and not secure ... both of us were able to climb down once the bottom started to rotate on the concrete pad; and once when attempted placement of a very heavy mast into the very small opening at the thrust bearing caused the gin pole to break and the gin pole and mast then bent over the top of the tower ... supported only by the rope. A fall of this heavy object could have severed the guy wires on 120 feet of 45G tower.  The first of these resulted in a 911 call and EMS emergency people who came, but actually complicated the situation because they were not trained in climbing at all, and the last one resulted in one of my friends nearly having the end of one of his fingers cut off by a sharp edge of the gin pole. We were fortunate in all three as we got down without additional injury of the loss of any towers.

For one, I'm hanging up my Klein lineman's "Bodybelt" climbing belt and not going up again until I have the proper PPE, and also am taking the pledge of slower climbing and the steps recommended by K1IR. The video in its final form along with associated written material will become available to all once final and it is highly recommended that this be a high-profile program at all ham-radio club meetings and other appropriate gatherings.

Jim N3BB

  At 06:46 AM 11/15/2019 -0500, Edward Sawyer wrote:
>I think that issue is that the discussion Jim had did not get to the 
>true root cause analysis in all cases.  HE did speak about temporary 
>guying below the work on  a tower and doing the "off the tower" 
>movement of guys which clearly was a root cause of more than one known tower incident.
>
>I believe that a rusted base at the concrete exit point was a root 
>cause and I am not sure I heard that mentioned.
>
>W0AIH's fatality was in no way due to not using the proper safety 
>harness.  There are pictures of him using one.  I am not sure what 
>failed in his arrest system.  But wearing the wrong harness is not what it was.
>
>To be truthful to the root cause analysis process, of which I do a lot 
>if it at work, is there documented fatalities of wearing the lesser 
>harness than what Jim was showing on the video?  If so, what happened, 
>and how would it be mitigated by that ewquipment?
>
>If we REALLY want to improve safety, we should focus on what's killing 
>people.  Not on what isn't killing people.
>
>Some of that occurred on Jim's talk.  Some of it did not.  And some of 
>it is great advice but may have no direct impact on reducing what's 
>killing people.
>
>Ed  N1UR
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf 
>Of rjairam at gmail.com
>Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2019 7:19 PM
>To: James Cain
>Cc: CQ-Contest Reflector
>Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Tower safety
>
>You got lucky.
>
>I prefer not to rely on luck, and it doesn’t take much time to get 
>properly suited up at all.
>
>As for replacing the climbing apparatus, I wouldn’t trust it if it 
>arrested a serious fall. Stress on that kind of apparatus is cumulative 
>so there may be hidden danger.
>
>This is your life you’re gambling with and by all means I won’t 
>tell you how to live it, but I prefer not to roll the dice.
>
>Ria
>N2RJ
>
>On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 3:22 PM James Cain <jamesdavidcain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I did pretty serious tower work for more than 20 years and quit at age 44.
> > By the time I had got suited up in that equipment in the K1IR video 
> > it would have been too dark to get any work done. And what's this 
> > about "If you fall, (the manufacturer says) to throw away the 
> > climbing
> apparatus"?
> > And what? Buy another climbing apparatus from us?
> >
> > K1TN
> > _______________________________________________
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> > CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
> >
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