Fine Homebuilding: We’ve always had a good safety record, but in the early ’90s one of the guys who had worked on our crew had a fall on another builder’s job site. He was 9 ft. off the ground when he broke the metal banding on a bundle of trusses and was knocked off the roof. Just like that, he was paralyzed from the neck down.
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I was sort of surprised that a bunch of the rigging gear and hardware that I read about in the SPRAT and IRATA paperwork made an appearance in this article. I would have figured since the fall protection methods for roofers is less elaborate and gear heavy, but I guess that was an untrue assumption. The fall protection requirements and standard with OSHA are pretty basic - have some sort of harness & arrest system if you're above 6ft. When I went through that chapter in the OSHA 30 it felt like they were promoting more engineering controls like barriers and avoiding edges than promoting the proper training of specialized equipment to work at height. That sort of makes sense though, since OSHA promotes engineering, work practice, and administrative controls for hazards before PPE. All the different types of anchors and anchoring devices shown in this article are neat. The hinged anchor is cool, and nicely customizable placable, but I’d be worried about the fasteners pulling out under a shock load - although I bet they are designed with as many fastener points as they do to avoid that. The safety bar was also an interesting anchor system, and I can see that piece having application on a steel grid system.
This article is definitely needed, especially for me because I have a little fear of heights but more so a fear of falling. I’m lucky that it doesn’t affect me to the extent that I can’t go up to the steel grid or up on a lift, but I still get really shaky. I remember going up on the small one person lift for the first time and that is absolutely terrifying. It’s really the shaking that gets you because it feels like it’s just going to topple right over (obviously it won’t but still). Don’t even get me started on those big gaps in the steel grid. I really could just fall right through those. Having read the article, I totally agree that physical barriers such as guard rails make all the difference. It got me thinking how long it would take for me to cross a catwalk with no rails. Even though I could easily walk across it without even touching them, it’s definitely a mental challenge when there aren’t any. I’d probably end up crawling.
I found this article to be specific and interesting, and is not an article I would usually click on. What drew me to this was that it was also about roofing, rather than theater. However, it is interesting to see how safety guidelines transfer between the real world and the theater world. When I was in high school, there was a new theater being built in my district, and during construction, one of the workers apparently had fell from the grid and had to get surgery on his head. Luckily he had survived, or else no student would ever be able to go to the catwalk or higher without proper harnessing and equipment in the entire district. I find it interesting how because he survived, these circumstances were not put in place. At CMU I believe that the fall protection is taken very seriously, with harnesses in the boom boxes and hard hats whenever there is construction.
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