I was required to wear a hard hat when I worked in Kentucky as a forester. The hat went on when you got out of the truck. I had a few close calls. Up in Pike County on a fire, a big limb landed right next to me, and if it had hit me on the head, the hat wouldn't have been any help.
In 1979 near Missoula, Montana, we were walking through burned over timber where big trees had been tipping over all night. "*" The fire had burned down in the soil, and roots were no longer stabilizing the trees. There was no noise at all until a tree landed. A big Douglas-fir tipped right after I passed it and the guy behind me had to jump ahead to keep from being crushed.
Illinois did not enforce wearing a hard hat, so I wore one only for fires, chainsaw activities, logging jobs, and windy days. (Actually, I tend to stay out of timber on windy days. I will go out in rain, but wind is just plain dangerous.) A safety reminder appeared a couple days ago. This treetop fell during the night when we had only light winds of 5 mph. This is another one of those things that will kill you whether you have head protection or not. When big wood falls it often causes smaller wood to fling great distances, so protection is a good idea. It seems a bit odd that I wear a hard hat more frequently now that I am retired than when I was working, but maybe my head is not as hard as it used to be.
* We were stuck up on a mountainside that night and everybody found a boulder or tree to get close to. The fire had caused boulders above us to break loose, and all night long, big rocks were coming down the mountain. We were glad to be able to hoof it out of there at first light.
4 comments:
Both the shipyard and the steelmill required wearing a hard hat.
You are correct that a large weight falling from some distance will only make the coroner's job more difficult because of the extra work needed to separate the hat from your remains.
On the other hand, there's lots of smaller things that can hit you on the head, and the hat provides great protection against those injuries.
Because of my experience, I'm going to wear the hard hat when there's a risk of falling objects.
I have seen and heard limbs fall on dead calm days, so the danger is always there. If there is a good breeze, I will cover for a stroll in the woods. I worked in a Joy Manufacturing plant for a year and a half, tearing down and building gear boxes for shuttle cars and miners. Surprisingly, nobody wore head protection in that place. The guy who ran the paint booth would suspend a shuttle car or miner from two overhead cranes and paint the underside without blocking up the load. It made me sick to see that, and I don't know why Joy let him work that way. They were mostly worried about back injuries because everything was heavy. There were lots of cranes, from little to huge for picking up loads.
While working in a shipyard I learned that how heavy & how far determined if you would live or not. Also,the Electricians would not wear aluminum hats - wonder why???
One of the differences between the shipyard and the mill was that the shipyard did many dangerous things as safely as they could while still doing the work.
The mill did dangerous things dangerously, and I quit after six months to go to work for Philly's regional railroad system as a heavy mechanic.
Due to the close confines in shipboard work, most lifting was done by beam clamps, pad eyes and chainfalls, it was amazing how a skilled crew of riggers could move and manipulate very heavy and large machinery through narrow spaces and land it where it was needed, and without injury or damage.
In the mill, it was almost all overhead crane work, and I recall large mill rolls being moved without warning to those the rolls would pass over.
Post a Comment