A 27 year old carpenter (single, no kids or wife) was killed a coupla days ago about two blocks from where we are working. He was up a two story ladder working on something and he fell off. He landed on a fence post and impaled himself. He last words were “call 911”. The ambulance came, loaded him up, but shut the sirens off before they got two blocks away.

The contractor is someone that we have been in contact with. We were slated to rough something for him. He was mainly doing remodeling and he has plans for a teardown and rebuild in the same neighborhood that we are working right now.

I don’t think this particular contractor will be doing anything too soon now. He didn’t have any worker’s compensation or liability insurance for the work that he was doing!

You know your having a bad day when your lawyer tells you “You’re lucky he died.”. That really happened. The lawyer did tell him that.

I’m relaying this story to tell all the youngun’s to pay attention to ladder safety. Pay attention to the angles. Get the feet stabilized. Clear the landing zone.

Sadly, we have surmised that one reason that may have contributed to his death is this particular citys requirement that all sites be fenced. The combination of very tight sidelots and the fence creates an unsafe ladder condition if someone is going to ascend to the second story windows. Add a dash of hostile neighbors (they don’t like these big overbuilds going up) and there is ample evidence of a too steep ladder condition.

Here’s a picture showing the type of situation that the guy was probably working in. Notice how close to the fence we will be working. There is no way that we would be able to lean a ladder, only on our property and do window trim on the second level. Wisely, we have been being very kind to the 88 year old gramma next door. She will let us use her driveway to put our ladder feet on.

webtag

Be safe.