[CQ-Contest] Tower Safety

[Kevan Nason]

Ed, N1UR wrote:
[CQ-Contest] Tower safety
Edward Sawyer EdwardS at sbelectronics.com
Sat Nov 16 06:58:49 EST 2019

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.
...  But the action provides no increase in safety for the three listed
items...

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
=========================

Ed,

I'll take you up on your offer of "...a good relation dialog to improve
safety."

I can see your point. Those three things above are important to the Root
Cause Analysis process of tower falls. Arguably, people pushing better
harnesses and avoiding free climbing don't have a strong point to make
there -- except maybe that having a modern, light, and comfortable harness
makes doing tower work easier and therefore climbing with one should be
safer. Especially a fancy harness with a sling for your rear end to rest on.

However, the three things you named are not the only root causes addressed
in K1IR's video as to why it's a good idea to wear a harness and to not
free climb. They weren't even really argued as being applicable to your
points. Using only those things to justify saying those climbing
precautions aren't necessary does the opposite of making tower climbing
safer. I'm concerned saying harnesses and 100% tie off isn't necessary may
encourage some to blow off that widely accepted guidance.

I'm not trying to be the Opinion Police. You obviously don't need my
permission to voice yours and you are a big boy who can do whatever you
want. It's your life and I don't know you. Other than a general interest in
people not getting hurt I don't really care if you kill yourself or not. If
you enjoy climbing more without all that extra crap, I hope you have a good
climb. I just want to voice an opposing viewpoint and try and discourage
those who might listen to you, another experienced ham trying to make a
counterpoint, say K1IR's recommendations aren't worth much and are
unnecessary.

Despite people always trying to find a simple root cause magic cure
solution there is rarely a single answer to a complex problem. Even though
wearing a full body harness and 100% tie off doesn't improve safety for the
situation of rusted tubes at a towers base or knowing to use temporary
guys, there are other frequently encountered situations where those are
good ideas to follow. Examples include climbing a well maintained tower to
replace a faulty run of coax or installing a new VHF/UHF antenna on a side
arm. Maintenance climbing is mostly what I do now. In my book following
those recommended practices are actually a good thing to do if it means I
can contest a few more years instead of making my wife write an obituary.
Ensuring tower legs have a drainage path to help prevent rusting or using
temporary guys for assembly and disassembly do nothing to prevent free
climbing falls either. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do either of those
things.

K1IR spent some time talking about "maintenance" climbing. Whether it
should be done or not, all agree free climbing happens during that work.
I've watched hams free climb a 180 ft tower and used to do it myself --
although on much shorter towers. Someone mentioned in this thread that
things like swatting at a bug happen. I was once 30 feet off the ground
approaching the rotor plate when two hornets decided I shouldn't come any
closer to their nest. First I knew of them was when one landed on my arm
and the other landed on my glasses. I jerked my arm away and swatted the
one on my glasses. I could have easily fell by that unplanned reaction.
Fortunately I was tied off and when my body swung out because I
unexpectedly released the grip of one hand the lanyard helped stop the
swing. If I'd kept swinging I could easily have lost my grip. I'm sure most
have there own stories to tell.

I used to lead industrial work crews and hated it when my bosses decided to
make me the site Safety Representative for a contract maintenance company.
Me?!? But I learned a lot from that experience. It is likely many people on
this reflector have attended more after accident investigations where
people needed first aid or went to the hospital than I have. I'm sure they
too are tired of hearing people say "It shouldn't have happened. We've been
doing it that way for 20 years". They have also probably walked up to
people doing things that obviously have the potential to hurt someone and
been told "Nothing's going to happen. It'll only take me two minutes to
climb up there and open that valve. It would take me 30 minutes to walk
back to the tool crib and get a harness." I've also read safety reports
about people falling out of their climbing belt and falling off
girders/towers/trees/pipes because they weren't tied off. Its safe to say
none of those folks expected to fall. If I remember right (just as K1IR
said in his video has happened) the guy who slipped out of his belt fell
the rest of the way and died. Even watched a video once of a guy missing a
rung on a ladder. He fell 20 feet to the concrete below and died. Unplanned
things happen. None of the three things you listed above (time on the job,
knowing your work, knowing the condition of the tower) would have prevented
those falls. Only wearing a harness and being 100% tied off would have. Not
free climbing probably kept me from falling when those hornets came by.

I think there are too many safety rules in the world. I'm a rebel in that I
don't spout the mantra "All accidents are preventable" and don't think just
because someone is stupid enough to not take care to prevent spilling 180
degree McDonald's coffee on themselves that we ought right a government
regulation to lower the temperature it's served at. But I also think there
are too many people saying "I've done it this way forever and nothing has
happened to me yet so it's perfectly fine to keep doing it this way."
K1IR's video about 100% tie off is not BS. Too many people have fallen from
heights to prove that point. It's a pain to do it the way he describes and
seems unnecessary. I thought so too until I had to investigate falls. I
heard the same people who regularly griped about how unnecessary it was for
us supervisors to make them wear harnesses to do two minute jobs say they
were glad they were tied off after they fell. They used to think it
couldn't happen to them -- until it did. Are you one of the "Invincible"
people in the audience that K1IR referred to? I agree if you are still free
climbing towers in your belt it likely won't happen to you. Probably won't
happen to anyone you know either. But it might. That was the whole point of
his opening the video with the odds of it happening to Ham tower climbers
being higher than parachutists or professional climbers. Reportedly W0AIH
had been using that lift chair of his for years without incident. Until
there was one. He probably didn't see anything wrong with his way of doing
things. Wonder how hundreds or thousands of climbs he had made on his 40 or
50 towers? Wonder how many close calls he had over the years? His lift had
worked over and over and over again. Now he's dead. I feel bad for him, the
guy that ran the winch, and Paul's family. An unplanned event happened with
the pulley even though he had been doing it that way safely for years. It
only took that one mistake to kill him. You say it was an equipment issue
and a harness wouldn't have helped. I say if he didn't use that lift,
climbed with a harness and 100% tie off, or gotten someone else to climb
for him, he wouldn't have been in that lift and it wouldn't have failed.
But if he had to die it seems good to me he died doing something he loved.
It was his choice how to do it. More power to him. Hope I go quickly like
that.

The link below isn't about tower climbing or even Ham related. I used to
show this safety video before I retired and several people came up to me
afterwards and said it spoke to them. Mike gets it. As he says, each person
decides for themselves how important safety is. I'm not trying to change
your mind. I just wish you wouldn't say things to make others be less safe.
Let them decide on their own what their acceptable level of risk is and
what they do or do not want to do when climbing. Please stop saying its
okay to ignore what is clearly a safer way to climb and is now an industry
standard because so many people have fallen because they weren't doing so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RrhkMk2zY

You'll never read a headline that says "Ham falls from tower because he
read a post by Ed that encouraged him to free climb." But you'll never know
if the next death was influenced by your words or not, will you?

Kevan
N4XL