[TowerTalk] Roswell Tower Accident

[Jim Lux]

Ethan wrote:
> Doug Renwick wrote:
>> IMO if you can't free climb a tower then maybe you shouldn't be climbing
>>   

> Forgive me for being so direct but I think it's necessary.
> 
> That is the stupidest response I've ever heard!  You would be better off 
> getting rid of all your climbing gear and hiring someone with sense in 



Hey guys and gals(there must be lurking women on the list).. it's all a 
matter of risk acceptance.. Everyone gets a chance  to decide how safe 
they want to be, based on their own personal ideas.

People do free climbing up El Capitan without any protection.  Others 
won't even do bouldering on a 30 degree slab without being tied on.

People jump onto angry bulls and try to hang on for 8 seconds.  Others 
won't even come close to a dead cow that's been sliced into little 
pieces in the supermarket.

For the last 25 years or so, I've ridden horses and jumped them jumps. 
When I was single in my late 20s, the jumps were huge, falls were 
spectacular, and I periodically got hurt. Now, I'm married, have kids, 
have an older creakier body, so I don't jump as big, nor do I fall off 
(as often), nor do I get hurt. My risk acceptance posture has changed. 
Some might say that I was stupid to do the big jumps.  Nope.. I knew it 
was dangerous, but I also consciously decided that the thrill of jumping 
6 foot oxers in a timed contest was worth the *certainty* of 
occasionally getting hurt, and that if worst came to worst, nobody was 
going to suffer for it (except me).  Heck, the occasional falls just 
make it more exciting.. when you get around without crashing and 
burning, it's "I cheated the devil one more time".

The same is true for big-wave surfers, free climbers, and anyone else 
participating in a "thrill sport".  It's also true for folks who travel 
to exciting, but dangerous, locations. {Mind you, sometimes I'm not that 
keen on my kids taking up these same dangerous activities: But Dad, you 
did it...}


So where does this fit in with TowerTalk...  This list is a great 
resource for the informed part of "informed consent".  What we can do 
here is talk about the various options and the pros and cons. In 
particular, we can talk about increased knowledge that's come about in 
terms of the biomechanics and the new technology that's available (e.g. 
those nifty cable brake things along the tower).

When I started rock climbing in the early 70s, the new safety hot-ticket 
was the swami belt: wrapping a 20ft length of 1" tubular webbing around 
your waist, and tying the rope to that, instead of just tying the rope 
around you. Today, nobody would do that; you use a regular body harness. 
  Likewise the use of belay brakes vs wrapping the rope around your hips 
and the "dynamic belay", which itself was an attempt to overcome the 
issue of high shock loads on  the falling climber who just had the rope 
around their waist.

But even so, falling and getting hurt is rare.  So you have a lot of 
anecdotes of folks doing what are, in reality, hideously dangerous 
things, but surviving. That leads to complacency, hey, I've done it 30 
times before, so it must be safe, when in reality, you've just been 
lucky on the 1 in 100 chance of killing yourself. (And even NASA gets 
bit by this.. viz ice hitting Shuttle thermal protective system)

Or, worse, someone setting out with total ignorance of the actual risks. 
Dave sees that Bob's been climbing his 200 foot tower barefoot, carrying 
the tools in his teeth, and he's done it every day for years, and now 
Dave assumes that it must be safe. But really, Bob is fully aware of it 
being dangerous, but has decided to do that way for the spine tingling 
frisson of fear and the adrenaline rush, because just getting country 
number 370 on 160m isn't exciting enough.


So, on this list, we can help distinguish between the anecdotally safe 
(the just plain lucky) and the objectively safe.


We can also describe what people who do it for a living consider 
appropriate, because there, at some level, someone has made a dollars 
and cents analysis of the risks (i.e. setting insurance rates and 
whatever rules you are required to follow to keep that insurance in 
force). However, what is acceptable risk for an occupational exposure 
might be higher OR lower than what any individual ham might consider 
acceptable. The same goes for engineering analysis on tower 
construction.. There's a big difference in the consequences of a tower 
failure in the middle of a cow pasture and in a tiny suburban lot, even 
if the objective risk of failure is the same.

In summary... be informed, make up your own mind, and don't do something 
that will get someone else hurt.

(and, darn, I wish my kids had taken up surfing, instead of riding 
horses. They're both somewhat dangerous, but one's a lot cheaper than 
the other.)

Jim, W6RMK