So, I was working away one Wednesday afternoon not long ago when one of our TPO correspondents sent me links to three Internet news items — all stories about fatal incidents at treatment plants (two wastewater, one water) in Pennsylvania.
They took place between July 30 and Aug. 19.
I’m not privy to news about every fatality that happens in our industry, but three such events, so close together in time and geography, made me stop and think. Maybe it should make you do the same. And ask, in particular: Is your safety program up to date? Are your people properly trained to follow it? And are your rules being enforced?
What happened?
Without getting into great detail, here is what took place. On July 30, according to the Associated Press, Sewickley Wastewater Treatment Plant employee Jack Hogan, 31, died while working in a 30-foot hole. “Hogan was working in the hole and fell back into it as he was trying to climb out,” the AP reported.
The first suspect was toxic gas, but the county medical examiner later ruled that Hogan died of injuries from the fall and that toxic gas was not a factor. But then, in a classic case of a misguided attempt to rescue a co-worker from what may have been a confined space, three other people who tried to get Hogan out were overcome by an unknown gas and had go to the hospital. They recovered. Hogan had been on the job about two months and left a wife and an 8-week-old child.
On Aug. 4, according to another news report, construction worker Cody Fyock, 23, was killed at the North Fork Creek Water Treatment Plant in Pine Creek when a steel forming wall collapsed and crushed him. Police initially ruled the death an accident, but an investigation was ongoing.
And on Aug. 19, the ABC-TV network affiliate in Philadelphia reported that an employee at the Tri-Community Sewer Authority wastewater treatment plant in Robinson died after he somehow drove a riding lawn mower into a wastewater pond. The county coroner said the man, 64-year-old Joseph Sisitki of Bolivar, apparently drowned.
About “accidents”
These accidents all seem highly unusual — we might look at them as “freak events” that no one could have foreseen and that would never happen at our facility. But then I recall working in a previous career with an executive of a mining company whose experience included managing a large coal mine in South America.
The mine had, by all industry standards, an exceptional safety record that should have made this executive proud. But if you asked him about it, he would remark, “I am ashamed to say that during my watch, two of our employees died.”
He’d go on to say there was really no such thing as an accident. That when he looked into an event that led to an injury, he almost invariably found that it could have and should have been prevented. That when he got to the bottom of it, he ended up scratching his head and saying, “How in the world could we have let that happen?”
This executive wasn’t interested in the statistics showing that his mine had far fewer lost-time injuries per 100,000 man-hours than the typical mine of similar type. His concern was that on two occasions he had failed. In his view, the only acceptable number of injuries and fatalities would be zero.
Toward zero
No doubt, deep down, that’s how you feel about safety, too. It’s hard to imagine a professional in our industry writing off a serious or fatal injury as just “one of those things.” And that being the case, how often do you stop to think that there could be hazards in your facility just waiting for a certain confluence of unfortunate events?
In the press of daily business, it becomes easy for safety to drift into the background of consciousness. So much of safety boils down to attention to detail, to meticulousness, to fussiness about rules that even employees themselves at times feel frustrated at having to follow. (“I’ll only be down in that tank for a few seconds — why do I have to go through all this rigmarole?”)
But go through it they must. And facility managers and supervisors must do the hard work of making sure they have a buttoned-down safety program in place, from procedures, to education and training, to equipment, to enforcement that includes counseling or discipline for violations. Without that, awful things are more likely to “just happen.” And you could end up having to tell a wife and kids why their husband and father won’t be coming home.
Is your safety program ready for prime time? Would it be appropriate, starting today, to give it a shakedown and a tune-up?
