Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Biggest Screw-up You Personally Seen Where You Work ?

I've seen a few. Closest to a kill, was my best buddy got hit by a swinging 6" gate valve.
Crane driver lost control, and pinned my buddy's head between a tank at an oil refinery, and the valve.

Split his hard hat right flat in half,, and he went home that day shaking....

Lots of them. Usually resulting in death, but not always.

Saw a hydro-test go bad on a capped riser when the pressure hit about 900 psi... Stripped the inferior bolts of their threads and blew the riser cap off right when a worker was leaning in because he noticed it leaking.

Took his head smooth off. He never knew what hit him.

Damn.

50 times the normal dose of morphine will kill em off every time.

Holy Smokes !!!

Worked my way through college in a milk processing plant. Had a guy connect the hose to a milk tanker and start pumping milk out without opening the hatch. Came back 30 minutes later to find a flattened tank.

I taught Industrial Arts/Technology Education for 30 years after that. Was pretty fortunate. Only had one kid screw up in the shop and not use a push block on a jointer. He shaved about 1/8" off the tip of a finger. Only injury in 30 years of teaching.

I had a engineer ask me to hook up a machine a few years ago. The disconnect was laying in the floor with two S J cords coming out of it. I opened the disconnect and checked he voltage. It had zero volts. I loosen the screws on the load side then pushed them out with three fingers. I hit the ground like a sack of hammers. Some dumbazz had the thing temped in the wrong side of the disconnect via twist lock welding receptical. dude didn't tell me he had it temped in and I checked the top where the power is SUPPOSED to come in , not the bottom... I screwed up because I should have checked the bottom too and someone else screwed up buy hooking it up wrong.

I went back and checked it with my meter and the voltage was actually higher than it should have been. It was 526 volts and all three phases went in my right hand and my left was grounded. I didn't even get burned. Lucky lucky lucky!

I was working a jobsite in Florida one time, when they were laying plywood on the roof of a 3 story apartment building. It was pretty windy that day, and I was watching this one little Mexican (maybe 120 pounds) walking along the edge of the roof while carrying a full sheet of plywood. The idiot was carrying it on the opposite side of his body, away from the roof edge. Sure enough, a gust of wind hit him, and blew him right off of the roof. Luckily, he landed in a pile of sand that they were using to mix with concrete. The little bas*ard jumped up, shook all the sand off while cutting loose a hell of a string of Spanish, and ran right back upstairs to go back to work.

As a construction worker at the GM plant in Wentzille, one day we were using a helicopter to set units on the roof, and remove items too. One area, there was a hole in the roof so we could drop the straps down into the hole , hook on equipment and haul it off. The helo guy on the roof with the radio, wasn't letting the straps clear us before sending the helo off. We let him know how unsafe that was but he kept on doing it until one of the hooks on a strap hook one of our guys, lifted him off the roof and his clothes tore and he fell into the hole. The helo radio guy realized he better exit quickly because if we caught him we were going to throw that POS off the roof.

He refused to come back to the roof after that and they had to send another guy to take his place.

1) I watched a guy pick a load of rebar with a 40 ton hydraulic crane. Apparently, he didn't have the outriggers fully extended. The crane toppled over. Nobody hurt, but crane was KIA.

2) was working at a job constructing a large earthen dam (Waddell Dam near Phoenix). We were blasting rock to construct the spillway. It was a 10 ton ANFO production shot. The spacing on the drill pattern near the edge was 4x4, and the powderman overloaded it. When the shot was set off and after the boom, it was surreal to see hundreds of rocks and material arcing high up in the air in complete silence - toward us. We dove under the drill tracks, pick up trucks, and whatever cover we could find. Nobody got hurt, but several pickups were heavily damaged by basketball since rock. The silence and seeing large rock arcing in the sky was something that I will never forget.

Oh, about 15-20 Lt.s shoot clearing barrels.
Guess that's how they trained to unload and show clear.
Drop mag, pull trigger.
Saw a new officer shoot the heel of the RO's boot with a 9mm once. He was directly in from of her walking towards the target rack when she pulled the trigger.

building a road up into a quarry our supposed experienced powder man set off a charge that was to blow the rock onto the road into a hole .charge threw the rock at a 90 degree angle to the left ,all the rock came to where we were standind behind a forest of 12-14 " trees we had to get skinny real quick.

2 other times i've seen powder monkies land rocks on roof tops .

and an couple of 30 to 40 hole missfires, interesting times.

norm

On the dairy we kept a Holstein bull in a pen by himself to handle the cows that didn't take to artificial insemination. I always took the job of separating the cow when the bull was done. One time I came around the corner and saw the Mexican hired man laying in the middle of the driveway.
"What the hell happened to you"
"De booool"
""Did you try to get the cow out?"
"Si"
"You want to go to the hospital?"
"I tink so"

Luckily only a couple of cracked ribs and a pair of dirty shorts.

Mine is on-going. In education, everyone keeps trying to come up with new ways to spend money to improve student achievement when what has always been needed is to demand that students behave and apply themselves.

Company's business was putting software in boxes with computers so when customers purchased a new computer they find software present and then call up to buy a license. Problem was that customers would call, pay and get license code which cost company more than they made on sale. They closed down as soon as they figured this out. They must have lost millions. It was before many people had internet.

I was tagging calves for an outfit, brush and scrub oak country. Usually I was by myself but I had a guy along that day, he is a arrowhead hunter for Caltrans, a wanabe cowboy. My dogs held up a bunch of cows in some trees and rocks. I roped a calf and started to tie-off, he said he would get down and tag the calf, so I pulled the little guy up close to a small oak, figured he could just reach around and tag him. Momma was a little pissed at what we were doing to junior lol. Ole Daryl reached around and tagged junior, momma blew snot, Daryl ran, momma ran and knocked Daryl down. Most cows will run over you and keep going, not this ole girl lol, she stopped on Daryl and commensed to beat him about the head and shoulders and I am laughing so hard it took me a second or two to push my horse into her to get her off of him. He was pretty beat up but nothing broke. I asked him if he learned anything. Told him he shouldn't have run and if he had kept the tree between her and him the oak would have taken the punishment lol. Good part is Daryl made a pretty fair cowboy.

Didn't personally "see" it as I was not in the shaft with the guy at the time, but was there immediately after.

Elevator tech I'd known for years was working on top of one of the cars. At some point he bottomed the elevator out on the last safety. A safety that requires a manual reset in the elevator pit. Rather than call someone else to come and get the car moving again (the proper procedure), he hopped a ride on the adjacent elevator to the top floor after a passenger entered and started it in motion.

According to the computer, he was able to make it to the roof and re-set safety, as well as the pit to re-set the manual. He took a ride on the adjacent elevator again to get to his workspace on top of the car he was working on. Best as we can tell, as he was stepping off, he tripped. The car started up with him hanging off the side of it. Up the car goes, and he got crushed between it and a structural beam. A 6' tall 260 lb man does not fit well between 12" of steel. We found his glasses, some blood, and hand prints on the beam where he held on before he no longer couldn't, where he dropped the 20' back onto the car he was working on. Massive internal injuries. He did not make it and was dead when we opened the doors.

At 19 for a summer job i hired on with a pos construction co to take up an old pipeline out of Pleasonton. After a few weeks the weilder got smashed when the pipe busted him in the face before he made it through the cut as there was pressure on the pipe down in the trench where it was bent to go deep under a highway.

I took his place at much higher than my previous pay. A Transcontinental co. Guy tried to keep me from getting killed as there was still a lot of distillate in low
spots in valleys and under highways and creeks, but he couldnt stay around all the time. Also, he taught me to go way up the line making cuts in the pipe at the spots it had been previously welded to let hydrogen sulfide hopefully burn out over the night. Also, to hold my head to the side and start my cuts on top so if gas flared through the cut it wouldnt get in my face. My hlpers used hammers to beat most the tar and paper wrapping off from around the old weld. Best to keep any fumes burning to prevent breathing any gas, of course, and if i was ever to pass out the helper was to cut the acetylene and blow oxygen into my face fr8m the cutting torch.

When me and my helper would get to the end of where the pipe wss skidded out of the trench to allow cutting, i would walk back to where they were loading the cut pipe. A caterpillar with a side boom would hook it on each end and lift it and lower the boom, extending it over a big truck with a big flat trailer they stacked the pipe on.

I had noticed the old cables to the boom were in bad shape and told the boys from the local high school gang i wouldnt walk under that boom.

One day as i was walking back to them the boom fell as a guy walked under it. Thankfully, about the time it hit his head it also hit the pipe stacked on the trailer. The guy was flopping around on the ground like a neck whacked chicken.

I ran and got in the pushers old torn up dodge and headed for the nearest dirt road to a farmhouse a couple miles away. I got there and they called an ambulance in pleasonton but they couldnt figure how to find the place. I told them i would meet them on the highway at the road turn of about 10 miles south of town. It was a few miles from the farmhouse.

I did and they followed me back to the pipeline and loaded him up. For sure nothing like now days. I got in the back with im and we headed to town. The driver and his sidekick didnt seem too concerned Or much of a hurry.

As we travelled and they shot the crap i noticed the kids lips turning blue. Stated doing chest compressions on him for nothing better to do.

All of a sudden he started violently comming to. I couldnt kerp them up with him fight and spesking in spanish. He was white and a star athlete in Pleasonton. As i held him down on the stretcher and him not breathing he soon calmed down and passed out again. I let his lips start turning a touch blue and repeated the process, as soon did he.

I was amazed the hearse helper was not interested in getting involed as the processe was repeated until we got to the hospital. I was seperated for a good time as they had him on O2 and strspped down and apparently eventually calmed down. Dr said he was ok after he quit cussing and raising hell in spanish. I had not been asked by dr or nurse what had gone on. IIRC the family denied he ever spoke or knew spanish. I cant remember if they got there in time to hear him or not. It was a lot of water under the bridge ago. I told the dr about it and he then decided to get xrays and wondered why i hadnt told him of thix before and let him know i wss not allowed around.

As far as i can remember he wss back to work in a few days and didnt know a lick of spanish.

I finally quit that job two weeks before college classes started after that same guy and my welders helper, who was sitting in the middle, played chicken with the accelerator one day after we left work for town.

They had never been out the caliche road back to the highway to town the work had finally progressed to and it had a slight bend in it a mile from the jobsite and the highway. To be continued

Continued.

I was tired, sitting in the bed on the side rail behind the kid who i had saved and in his truck. I wss resting, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. A mexican was inside the passenger door and one opposite me on the other side of the bed.

As we sped down the road i remembered a curve was somewhere ahead. I had gone out that way a couple days before after travelling up the covered pipeline and using a metal detector to spot mark it for the ditching machine which would soon follow.

I looked up and saw the curve close and figured we would die when we hit the outside bank but i thought if i did the right thing i might live. I jumped down in the floor and straightened out with
my feet up and against the cab.
when we hit remember thinking 'Damn what a jar'. When i came to i thought i was dead as i couldnt move or feel anything. Finally i got my eyes open and could see sky and clouds with my left but only light with the rt. I finally got an arm moving and found i was hung horizontally barbed wire fence. I finally got untangled and out of the fence and my rt hip had broke a 4 inch thick creasote post.

Folks were screaming and crying and hollering. I am just now rememberijg some of this for the first time in many years. I was pissed at the driver i had previously saved. I got to the drivers open window and rared back to bust him in his left jaw as he looked at me stunned and opened his mouth to say 'no'. Blood and teeth came gushing out. He had lost all his front teeth on the steering wheel. Passenger went through the windshield and wasnt moving.

I walked a mile to the highway and croseed and set down. Covered in blood from the cut in my right brow and it hanging down. Holding my pant up with both hands as all the seams were busted except the rt belt loop that held my striker.

Finally i laid down by the road and when i hesrd a car coming i waved an arm. A pretty yellow buick with a white top or 4 door pontiac pulled up and stopped. 2 well dressed mexican couples looked down on me and hauled azz. I got up and walked a goodly way to a house on up the highway and knocked on the door. Lady fainted and hubby caught her. They finally got me to come in to wait for the HP and ambulances. I wouldnt go in at first as i wss such a mess. The even made me sit on a cloth couch.

I got stitched up at the same hospital as before and a compression bandage and went to the hotel we were boarding in.
A while later the girl i was dating there came in and was for the first time ever going to make me forget my pain.

Soon after they brought my bandaged up welders helper in and she and he had a big argument and she left. Story of my fuggin life. I was too dumb to go rent another room or i had to save all i could for college i guess. I cant remember. I had breathed so much burning tar and gas off the pipe i was having splitting headaches most the time anyway. Great job for someone who as a kid who frequently woke up under an oxygen tent and whose parents had been told by Dr Wolfe at Scott and White i wouldnt surve to see school.

I left for home in Refugio the next day. I needed to fish and flounder Copano bay with my little brother some before college and see my little sisters after being gone all summer anyway.

In my experience it was the boss.

Jim

At the same refinery in '72, where my buddy got smacked by the valve (There's a reason they don't call them "Amusement Parks") I seen a beauty.

Guy from AIRCO was filling a LOX tank. Somehow the LOX hose disconnected, and fell right into a puddle of oil, right at his feet.

We were bolting up flanges about 25 yards away, and the explosion produced the thickest white cloud of smoke I ever seen, and a hell of a concussion.

The truck driver was hardly hurt, but he was very embarrassed! The explosion ripped the seam completely out of his pants, and when he got up off the ground he was wearing a 2-piece skirt, split vertically all the way up his legs.

Today, they would have taken' his "Man Card" away!
His only injury was a split lip, that they thought he got when the hose jumped up in the explosion.