WPXI: A man is in critical condition after falling 50 feet from the main scoreboard at Acrisure Stadium.
This happened Saturday around 10 p.m., following the end of the Pitt game, while crews were setting up for Sunday Night Football.
It was a precarious rescue. Pittsburgh EMS stabilized the victim and used a pulley system and basket to lower him to safety before he was rushed to Allegheny General Hospital in critical condition.
6 comments:
Let me start off by saying that this is an extremely tragic event, and my thoughts go out to the worker and their family. The industry that we work in can be an extremely dangerous one at times especially when individuals push the boundaries of what they should or should not be doing. Being up in the rafters or "in the air" in general and working at a height is at its core dangerous which is why everyone who works "in the air" of the performance industry should be thankful that there EMS operatives out there who know how save workers who have fallen from a height. Especially if said worker has not fallen all the way to the floor. If EMS did not have the training that they do, or the equipment / technology that they have many more people would succumb to their injuries that had occurred from falling from a height. Accidents are just that accidents, but it is a blessing that people are able to survive from said accidents regardless of how or why said accident occurred fault is irrelevant.
It's always horrible to hear about when people get seriously injured. I also think it's very important that we read about the injuries and severity of those injuries that can be sustained while doing dangerous work. Working at height has inherent risks and it's very easy to become comfortable with those risks the more we do them and I think it's super important to always have in the back of our mind that just because we have done something a hundred times and it feels like muscle memory there is always the chance to get hurt. I'm very curious to see if I can find out any more information about how the EMS team used a pulley system to stabilize their patient, because that's not something that you hear about very often. I'm also very curious to see what further safety measures will be put in place in the future at that Stadium to hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.
This is exactly why everyone needs to wear PPE, even if you think you’ll be fine. While we don’t know the mechanism of injury in this case, nor have a case report, regardless of what happened this is a tragic event and my heart goes out to them. Safety rules, such as wearing harnesses at high heights even tho it’s incredibly annoying, are written in blood. In the theme park world, if an accident happens, such as alton’s tower smiler accident, which in that case mechanics bypassed the rides safety system, causing a train to crash into another train, and nowadays it’s much harder to bypass the system and requires you to do a walk to the place you’re trying to bypass. A good majority of OSHA rules are also written in blood, workers were dumb or weren’t provided enough safety training, getting killed by doing things like not wearing harnesses 80 feet in the air, then falling.
This is a perfect example of why everyone should always be wearing PPE, even when you feel comfortable. After all, we make the most mistakes when we are not uncomfortable. I hope that he and his family are doing ok, as we still don’t know exactly how this happened. I understand that safety rules can be extremely inconvenient. I have definitely broken some safety rules myself, especially when just trying to push through and finish the job. However, these are the times when we are often complacent and actually need the protection of those safety precautions the most. The OSHA rules about the safety harnesses were made because people have gotten hurt doing things at heights. There should be ways to make it harder to bypass these regulations. I feel like this event has encouraged people to remember that rules and regulations are created for reasons that must be recognized.
These Articles always make me want to go and get my first responder certification. Not because I want the added liability but because if I was the Lead Carpenter or in any position of leadership I want to have more steps to take then call emergency services and hope they get there in time. Where are the points that EMS would want to gain access to to hang their safety lines? What can I do to ensure that this individual gets the care they need as fast as possible? We work in an industry where accidents happen, but we work tirelessly to ensure that those risks are mitigated to the best of our ability. With fall arrest systems, working to set up our systems in a way that can get as much work done on the ground as possible. But we also need to be prepared if something goes wrong and have the proper training necessary to treat and care for our crew. Working at height is a scary thing and we do it every day so articles like this serve as a stark reminder of the risks we are taking and to remember to always be aware of them.
Working at night, up high, on a tight timeframe in the wind is a horrible set of conditions that make that work very dangerous for any worker taking on that job. The best thing to do in prevention of this accident is mitigating the hazards as best you can. The best being just to eliminate the hazard by being able to do the work on the ground but I am sure that that was impossible or prohibitively expensive. Other options could have been placing a net under this worker or ensuring the proper use of PPE. These of course are only reactionary and do not help the current situation but could help to prevent this kind of accident in the future. It did sound like there was a failure of some controls that were either skipped or were never in place for a worker to fall fifty feet uncontrolled and to now be in critical condition.
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