My version of the Sad Safety Reminder

[Don Bradner]

On 6/10/2008 at 7:15 PM jim riordan wrote:

>Better falling then fallen on!
>jim riordan

True, but better does not necessarily mean good! On Sunday, before there had
been any discussion here of the cause of Jim's death, I took an ambulance trip
due to a 'Bird maintenance fall, and just got out of the hospital a couple of
hours ago. I'll describe the stupid thing I was doing, but not so much in the
vein of "don't do this" but rather consider that there are a lot of ways to hurt
yourself when working around a 20+ton vehicle that is nearly 12 feet high.
Common sense would have prevented my injury, and I consider myself to have
fairly good common sense; just easy to let it lapse.

First the injury pictures:

http://www.arcatapet.net/xray/before.jpg
http://www.arcatapet.net/xray/after1.jpg
http://www.arcatapet.net/xray/after2.jpg

What I was doing: replacing the drip line around the top of the bus after
re-caulking. I was on a tall step ladder, positioned parallel to the bus, and on
a stubborn screw I pushed hard with the power screwdriver to get it to turn. Had
the predictable effect of pushing the ladder right out from under me

The reason that it took them three days to release me is that it was a compound
fracture, with about 4 inches of bone out of the skin. Makes infection a high
risk, so they wanted to keep me pumped full of antibiotics.