Working in the Line of Fire
Latest Article by Phil LaDuke
In this month’s The Safe Side (my column in Fabricating &metalworking magazine) I explore the puzzling and deadly world of working in the line of fire.
It doesn’t matter how often we observe them, how much effort we make to raise awareness, or how we’ll we train them a certain percentage of workers will put themselves in harm’s way.
I hope you will give it a read and let me know what you think
-Phil
WORKING IN THE LINE OF FIRE
When someone dies in the workforce through no fault of his or her own it’s undeniably a tragedy. But in many people’s minds, line of fire injuries — those injuries that result when a worker places his or her body in the direct path of a serious hazard — the injured worker must bear at least some culpability for his or her injury. It’s especially easy to dismiss a line of fire injury as the worker’s “own stinking fault,” but is it?
Before I continue I should disclose something about myself that could bias me on this topic: my grandfather died on the job from a line of fire injury. As a farmer in the 1950s, he left a lucrative career installing conveyor belts — a job that required extensive travel — so that he could spend more time at home with his family. He was driving a tractor that was struck by a speeding locomotive at a poorly marked crossing. Witnesses said the train was going upward of 80 mph. His view was at least partially obscured by overgrown bushes near the tracks and he was either legally deaf or close to it.
He left behind a widow and four daughters (one of whom was developmentally disabled) who would eke out a hardscrabble living, financially and emotionally crippled by his death; a family laid waste by a single moment. While there were many things that factored into my grandfather’s untimely demise, the fact remains that in the last moments of his life he made a decision to place himself in the line of fire. As you might expect, I spent a lot of time thinking about the circumstances of my grandfather’s death, I don’t attribute it to shaping my view of worker safety, but I suppose that’s inevitable.
My grandfather isn’t alone; the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 17 percent of all workplace fatalities in the U.S. are the result of line-of-fire injuries. Suffice to say that line-of-fire injuries raise a lot of questions; questions, sadly, to which we will most likely never get satisfactory answers.
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE: WORKING IN THE LINE OF FIRE
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