What’s your worst fall w/o being injured
Yesterday I was walking around my house (which we are in the process of building) & the basement stairs are not in place yet.
My brother (who is helping me) threw a sheet of plywood over the opening (I prefer having it open b/c I know there will come a time when I will step on it w/o thinking whereas I would notice a big hole in the floor).
Anyway, it was evening & I was just walking around (just about to leave in fact) and I did just that. The plywood slipped off the edge of the opening & I fell 10 feet into the basement. The basement was dark, so I misjudged where the floor would be & ended up doing just about a belly flop.
Thankfully there was a stack of plywood scraps on the floor – they were hard, but still preferable to concrete.
I laid there a minute to check myself out & other than a couple of scrapes on my arms (where I tried to grap the edge of the stairwell as I fell), no damage. Anyway, I’m sore this morning, but it coulda been worse.
What’s the biggest spill you’ve had & couldn’t believe you were okay?
Anyway, I’m gonna tack a few nails in the ply to make it a little safer.
Edited 10/17/2005 1:02 pm ET by Soultrain
Replies
after pulling up deckboards, went to walk the joist back to the other side. Rotted joist gave way. 20' to the bottom.
Fortunately, I was all wet after the first foot of freefall -- this was a boat dock. :)
Last summer, I had a 14' ladder up on another roof that was not tied down. Bottom kicked out, slipped of the 8 foot roof and there I am holding on to the ladder ridding it as far as I could -- when it hit the ground it, by sheer force, made me fall off the 14 foot ladder. Fortunately, I missed the huge pile of large building stones and landed flat on my back -- I was soooooooooo lucky, I could have been gone. I was 58 then and ever since then I have started taking precautions that I did not take before -- I was lucky beyond imagination. When I hit -- I was alive and conscious -- just got up and finished the job knowing that one of my nine lives was just used up.
"ladder up on another roof that was not tied down. Bottom kicked out,"
Two of us were working a 2.5 story roof in winter in MA. About 25 feet up. Ladder was on a frozen puddle. Wind keep knocking it over and we'd be calling for 20 minutes each time for someone to set it back up.
After two or three times, we realized "Are we not plumbers? We have torches." So we heated the aluminium legs, melting them into the ice which then refroze. That ladder was SOLID thereafter.
P.S. what are plumbers doing on a roof? Solar DHW install. I think it was a three 4x8 panel system.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
This reminds me of a fellow carpenter who drive his 1958 Classic thunderbird to work show off. He parked in on the apartment building site in on the frozen site. The site thawed before lunch, and created about 4" of mud where he was parked. The car sank. It got cold after lunch ...started to snow and at the end of the day the car was frozen into the mud. No pulling him out. He had to wait until the mud thawed the next day.
Why drive a 1958 Classi TBird to work and park it in the mud ? (see carpenter).
That kinda happened to me Nov 29, 1978. Wife was in labor with our first child. Started at 2AM and she was eventually delivered 11:30PM. Anyway, it had been cold but turned all warm and balmy during that day, then the temp dropped to zero about 10PM (and stayed below zero for a month). My old Vega was out in the hospital lot, parked on an icy spot. When I finally headed home about 3AM it was frozen into 3" of ice.Luckily, rocking the car back and forth for a few seconds broke it free.
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No electrons were harmed in the making of this post.
A while back, redoing a bathroom, stripped the subfloor to the joists. Old beat-up 1x planks. Left a couple of wide ones here and there for me to walk on, lightly nailed down...
End of the day, getting tired & careless, plank gives under me, real fast, fall down and land straddling a joist. Ouch, double ouch. Only thing that saved my delicate parts was the floor of the crawl space underneath, tip of my toes landing helped cushing the "crush".
Got bruised up a bit, also when DW came home that night she asked about the higher pitch in my voice and my unusual lack of "interest" ...
No big falls for me, the one save that stands out in my mind was running fast, leaping over a trailer tongue and snagging my shoe on it. I was going down. But, unlike I usually do, I didn't try to break my fall. I just went with it. Something must have awaken my inner-Shaolin-priest from a previous life because I tucked my shoulder and head, rolled back to hip to leg to feet and jumped up standing. I've never studied any martial arts, but I could really appreciate the value of learning how to fall well.
Had a co-worker go off a roof, about 14 feet. Landed in mud and was unhurt. It was break-up and he later advocated falling in the Spring onto mud instead of onto ice or dry ground.
Another co-worker advocated falling right before a lay-off because disability pays a better percentage, taxfree, and sooner than unemployment.
I am a custom home builder living and working in Texas, but came up through the system starting as a frame carpenter in my home town of Memphis, TN.
1972 / Memphis, TN I was working on an apartment complex. It was two stories and we were on a scaffold at the top of the second floor, hanging siding on a gable. The cut man was on the ground and sending us cut pieces via a helper. The helper would walk the cut piece up the interior stairway, come out through a dormer window and bring the piece to us on the scaffold. The gable scaffold put us in a position where, at one point on the scaffold, the roofline was waist high.
The wind was blowing and caught a piece that the helper was carrying. The piece came loose form the helper and hit me across the chest. I fell backward off the scaffold 2 full stories and landed in the mud on my butt, with just a small cut on my pinky finger from trying to grab the scafflod on the way down.
I was 18 years old, which helped, but I do not know if it helped or hurt that my fellow carpenter and I were smoking pot in a pipe as we worked. We combined it with Wild Cherry pipe tobaco to disguise the smell. I got up from the fall and went back to work....no problems.
my worst fall happened 14 years ago , i met my wife ,fell in love and , , some days are much more painfull then others
Best reply yet! I'm still desperately in love with wife. You make the best of everything that's handed to you.
An artist avails himself to both the darkness and the light. A brave artist swims in the same water in which the personality of the psychotic drowns.
Bout ten years ago....first and only fall....(knockwood.)
Up on a catwalk installing new windows in the addition we were building. 24' walk resting on a ladder bracket at one end and sitting atop a garage wall (roof not yet framed) about two thirds the way down. If I`m explaining correctly, you understand that the far end of the catwalk extended about 8' beyond the garage wall. (Can you say "accident waiting to happen"?)
Just finished nailing off the window directly above garage wall....turned to head for next opening toward ladder bracketed end. Realizing I left my level hanging on the wall next to first window I spun and stepped. Apparently just too far beyond the cantilever.
It all happened in slow motion.....think Bugs Bunny....saw the concrete garage floor coming up fast. Turned to watch far end of catwalk pointing straight up in the air. I tried to run back. Apparently humans are unable to scale vertical surfaces. As the ground closed in on me, I dove off of the catwalk, probably saving myself some sever injuries. landed faced down, but amazingly unscathed. (Cept for the ego, of course.)
Don`t plan on doing anything like that again.
J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
Two times .
Once when I was yung and stupid I rested a lader on the corner of a building and it flipped me about 8 ft up.
The second time when I was older and stupid, I was telling a man at a church how I never fell and tripped over a tool box and fell talking to him.
Tim
Not to be an alarmist, but you may want to get checked out--sometimes falls like that can injure you inside (like rupture your spleen), but I guess if you feel okay and have no swelling or hard and painful places, you are okay. A neighbor of mine did the same thing--it was dark and he stepped through the opening, only he landed face up and it killed him.
Look in the archives under 'surviving falls'. A coworker fell of the very top a big grain elvevator in MT and landed in a full grain truck that had just pulled up - he gives details in the thread.
years ago, my brother, father and I were framing a big addition with a cathedral ceiling. It had several skylights.
We had just finished sheathing the roof, and my brother cut out the holes for the skylights. We then ran the tar paper. As we were rolling the felt out, I said something to my brother about being careful around the holes he had just made. He said something back like "mind yer own business". Just about a minute later, he stepped right thru the paper over one of those holes. Fortunately, he was able to catch himself by the armpits before he fell all the way.
I never did say "told ya so". I guess I was on good behavior that day.
Stopped by a friends house one day to say "what's up?" He is working on some plumbing in ceiling, so I offer some help with the piece he can't seem to get. I walk up his rickity 6foot wooden ladder and start messing with a 4" pvc pipe. No warnign when the dang thing broke in half. That was the last time I ever got or will get ona wooden ladder.
One better is something a different buddy did. We were doing soffit and fascia on a garage. He is on the top of a 10 foot ladder (not wood) and one leg kinda sinks a bit in the dirt. THe ladder stays, buddy falls off. Lands on his back unhurt, but so close to edge of sidewalk(not yet backfilled) that his hat got knocked off.An inch to short. That's the story of my life !
bstcrpntr --- I hope to grow into this name.
We were framing a house in Waltham probably 5 years ago. My boss at the time was shoving 2x12 up from the 1st floor to me on the second floor via an open foyer with out guard rails. I grabbed one, he wasn't looking and shoved it again, which pushed me back over the other side of the foyer and down to the 1st floor. All I remember is the sound of my body hitting the deck... sounded like a side of beef getting dropped. It kinda was, I guess. I've only framed two houses in my life with 12' ceilings.... and that was one of them. I was a little sore and a little more cautious, but I didn't miss any work. Same house... I slipped face first down a valley we were shingling. What a rotten feeling that was. Didn't slide very far, but still.
Maybe three winters ago we were framing a house with a walk-out basement so it was three stories in the back. We were framing the gables up on the attic deck. I stepped on an off-cut of plywood that was 1/2 in the frame and 1/2 outside of the frame. On the way down I grabbed onto the flying rake rafter that I had just finished nailing off so I didn't get very far. We had the radio up and there was only one other guy up on the attic deck with me at the time and he was framing the gable on the opposite end of the house. So I hung there for a few minutes before I decided to drop my belt to lighten the load. It was the buckle on my belt that had me hung up and not allowing me to do a 'pull-up' and get back on the deck. I dropped the beslt and pulled myself up and no one had even noticed what happened. I just went downstairs, picked my tools up out of the snow and went back up to work. Didn't tell anyone until the ride home.
I did watch my old boss fall 32' to a basement footer once. That was awful. I still have nightmares about it after a full day of working heights. He was staring right in my eyes as he went down. Six broken ribs, ruptured spleen, concussion, internal bleeding and a long time in the hospital. That was awful.
not a fall, but know of a guy when roofing nailers first came out. nailing right at eave......yep drove that sucker all the way home. squad had to cut the roof out, took him to the hospital w/ the roof in his lap. Something tells me he had a lack of interest that nite too.
Just about a minute later, he stepped right thru the paper over one of those holes
I did that once Shep. I was younger and lighter then. I think now, I'd rip my arms off if I tried to stop myself like that.
My only fall was an 11' drop off a shingled roof. I was on a service call and had to nail up some lose siding that the shinglers had created. I didn't want to nail a cleat onto the shingles. I tested my footing and decided to go for it. I only had to step up onto the roof about 3'. Instinctively, before I ascended, I checked my landing-making sure I wasn't going to land on a pile of debris. I should have followed my instincts. As I started nailing the siding, my feet started sliding on the granules. I quickly figured out that I wasn't going to stick so I basically surfed off the roof and dropped with a roll. I didn't like it, but I didn't get hurt.
Now I'm old. There aint no way in heck that I'd do that again. I'd put a cleat on, then tar the holes, or bring a roof jack back the next day.
blue
My brother was always the lighter, skinnier one. I probably would have ripped my arms off back then, too. LOL
I'm extremely unlikely to be doing much roof work anymore. 22 years ago I had a nasty fall off a roof, and lets just say I'm lucky to be walking and working. I'll keep my feet on the ground, thanks.
nice post...three falls come to mind when pondering this question...i was 5 yrs old when my dad, two grandads, two uncles were building our farm home...had scaffolding running around the house bout 6 ft up....i was running around the house on the scaffolding and encountered the dreadful 1-1/2" drop of overlapping boards...hit the ground like a rock...knocked the wind right out of me....that small drop still gets me from time to time.
the second & third fall happened as a twenty something framer w/no fear....walked across ceiling joists w/out rat track installed yet and stepped on one w/a BIG knot and did a trap door thing straight to the floor....bags loaded w/lots of weight....landed right on my a$$....bruised an elbow and pride...got up and climbed back up and continued telling helper what he needed to do....
third time i was laying out top plates for r/j leaning into a 40 mph wind and suddenly the wind died down to 25.....went right over and again landed on my a$$...that day i said screw this and rolled up and went home....
i'm much more cautious these days...not a framer anymore...lead carpenter and trying to let the young bucks do the acrobatics....lol....only problem is that there aren't too many young bucks wanting to come aboard...but that's another thread.
ok not my worst fall, I ve had uglies
but worst fall for me, was today, watching my oldest son (23 years old) walking the plates as we were rolling trusses, take a fall
luckily only about 12 feet
dropped to a wall side that no one could see him
two of us , on the ground , ran like crazy around the corner to find him
....to find him standing up and telling us he was ok
boy did that put a skip in this dads heart beat
he said, mind if someone else goes up on the plates
I said sure no problem, and I finished the day , walking plates, rolling trusses
Mid-winter Michigan roofing, stepped an inch and a half from one plank to the next without expecting it, felt like I fell thirty feet without landing.
That inch and a half 'll getcha every time!I have already told about all my biug fallls too many times here, but back when I wa a ayoung kid, I climbed up on the roof aver the kitchen with Mom's umbrella to do like in the cartoons. It was a sweet feeling to be drifting on air for half a second there, until the thing turned inside out and the next fourteen feet went fast. No injuries except to Mom's umbrella.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
We call this the 1 and 1/2" DROP OF DOOM!
Too many to remember, but one of the more amusing ones was during a down to the studs kitchen reno. Client wanted to remove two 50 ft white pine trees almost right against the house to let in light. Twenty by thirty yard space with busy road intersection on 2 sides and house on other 2. One tree has major fork about 20 feet up, so I climb up and rope one side to the other with 4 ropes and cut it. It falls, and ends up hanging evenly from all four ropes parallel to the ground about 18 feet up. I set a ladder against it and climb up to cut half of it off. As we are joking about cutting on the wrong side of the ladder (which I didn't do) I finish the cut and releasing that weight causes the part the ladder is leaning against to spring upward. So I'm standing on a ladder that is now just leaning on thin air with a running chain saw in my hands. Do you grab harder when you start to fall? I go down, revving the saw, my leg slips thru the rungs, but somehow my body knows what to do and rolls over the saw on impact preventing me from breaking my leg or cutting myself, and i am lying on my back holding the still running saw over me at arms length oh so gratefully laughing at my folly. Only a bleeding shin, that was one of the entertaining ones.
sounds like my brother's mistake. he leaned an 18 foot ladder against a 17 foot high limb, about 8 feet from the tree, then cut the non-tree end of the limb off. without the weight of the cut off piece, the remaining limb lifted up to 19 feet. so now, he has a running chain saw in one hand, and a limb in the other, standing on a ladder that he was holding up, rather than the other way around. and no one came when he yelled. he managed to kill the saw, lower it to the ground, remove his boot lace, tie the top rung to the limb, and scamper down before it broke. sorta mcgyverish.
Back in my 20s ... I was planning to paint my house ...had rented and erected staging, bought the paint, got a few days off work ... then broke my leg playing softball. Had a full length cast, but being young and foolish, decided that if I could get myself up on the staging, I could just slide along and paint in a sitting position (my wife would come out periodically and help me reposition the planks - and remind me that I was an idiot).
All went well until I got to the last section - where 2 offsetting rooflines met, I had to go up on the lower roof and paint the siding between the two roofs. I dragged myself up onto the roof, leaving the relative safety of the staging behind ... once I got to the top, I figured, I'd just paint as I moved down, finally ending up back on the staging. I didn't figure on the bees ....
I never really saw where they came from, but I panicked and started to slide. As I gained speed, I was consumed with two thoughts: one, don't paint the roof! So I kinda rolled onto my back, holding the can in one hand, the brush in the other. Of course, this turned out to be the position for maximum speed! (on a related note, there is an arc on the brick over the front door of my parents' house from when I fell off a ladder while painting the soffit and stuck out my paint brush to slow myself down. I never heard the end of that ...)
As someone mentioned earlier, these things seem to happen in slow motion. My second thought was 'hey, my leg is already broken!' which somehow seemed like the funniest thing in the world at that moment ... so I went over the edge laughing my #### off! I sailed right by the end of the staging, feet first, face up, and landed right in a shrub, arms and legs (and plaster cast) sticking straight up in the air, still laughing. She finally found me (I often think she saw the whole thing and left me there for a while to prove her point) ... and pried the can and brush from my hand.
I declared the house painted at that point - close enough.
I don't care who you are that was funny
I usedto walk up and down a ladder without holding on. This came from my hot asphalt roofing days when it was easier to carry two buckets of hot at one time than to try carrying one up the ladder. I don't recommend this to anyone, but I was on the acrobatic side of life back then and fairly good at it.Finally came the day that I was on a flat roof with a can of paint and a brush needing to go down, so i reverted to my old ways and stepped off to walk down the ladder face firstwith the gallon of paint in one hand and the brush in the other. I got fetched up somewhaer between left and right foot, and ended up going down the ladder on my reqar end, boucing nicely off eac of fourteen rungs. All I could think of was don't spill the paint so I was holding it out at arms length.Got the picture? my both feet are straight out ion front of me, my buitt is bouncing on down, my left arm is straight out to the left and my right arm was doing something with my paint brush similar to a cowboy on a bull. When I finally hit the lawn, the paint can out leveraged my arm and it came down hard enough to hit ans splash. Fortunmately that splash only hit the grass which I promptly transplanted.Yep, my butt hurt for a wek.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
8' off the roof, landed on my feet and one hand.
just a bruised forearm
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WWPD
I rode double stacked baker scaffolds down twice, although I sprained both ankles one time and one ankle the other time, they weren't bad enough to really consider an injury. I've fallen while walking stilts numerous times without getting hurt. The most serious thing that happened to me would be when I fell off a ladder once and had a monster plumb bob in my tool pouch, which I landed on. That left a mother of a bruise on my thigh, it was very painful just to walk on it.
Fell 9' off a roof into mud with nothing hurt but my pride.
Fell out of a two-story attic into the basement, between 16oc joists. (Tells how thin I was 19 years ago.) Landed on my feet with a few scrapes on my arms, a sore nose, and a broken toe where the framing hammer landed on my foot. I bought steel toed boots the next weekend.
Rode a 24' ladder down to the ground while limbing a tree. I learned that lesson from Fine Homebuilding. If I hadn't read that tip who knows what would have happened. Your first inclination is to throw the chainsaw as far as you can in one direction and jump in the other.
I made the mistake of cutting a limb way too far above my head and when the tree "kicked" after losing the limb it shoved the ladder away from the trunk. I knew I had read a tip on this so I quickly sorted out what to do and dropped the saw, slid down the ladder as far as I could fireman style and then made ready for the impact at the last moment. It really worked! The slow arc the ladder makes is much easier to negotiate than falling dead straight into the ground.
NCtim
This ones simply amazing...
The neighbor had 2 huge old pines in the front yard, 40-50' range. Well her cat gets out one day to have a look from the top. She's out there in her nightcoat and a crowd gathers. One neighbor comes to get me as I WAS thin for my height. I have no problem climbing or with heights so away I go.
You know how pines grow with layers of branches and 2' of trunk in between? Well I get to where the branches are bending under my weight but I can almost reach the cat... when I hear *snap* and my feet go out in front of me and I'm falling flat on my back. I'm spread-eagled hoping to hit something. Only needles. Then on the last set of branches about 7' off the ground, I get hit in the back of the knees with a solid branch, stopping my legs but my body continues, now swinging from the branch. I do a 180 degree swing so I'm face down parallel to the ground and my knees release and I wind up standing up just like Mary Lou Henner after a vault, arms up and everything.
The crowd goes from from screams to cheers and requests to 'do it again' when they can get their camcorders.
No, I didn't get the cat. Funny, to this day I don't like em.
Several fall throughout the years but only one I can remember where I didn't get hurt.
Almost 30 years ago I was painting houses in Syracuse for summer work. I was about 20' up on a 32' extension ladder and she started to slide sideways. About halfway down I jumped with a full gallon of Sears Weatherbeater in my hand, I hit the ground on my feet and the momentum kept me running with the paint can still upright and I kept going till I was rudely interrupted by a thick 8' high hedge. Half the paint went all over my front, and the other half stayed in the can and somehow this cat managed to land on his feet and stay there. I never went down. With a hot temper I threw the shirt away and yelled "F.U." to the house and promptly threw the ladder back up and finished out that upper window.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Hi Soultrain, hope your feeling better soon.
We were working in a stairwell, firring out the headroom. I had my ladder in the basement leaning on the floor joist about 4" from the bottom of the joist, the bottom of the ladder was in mud but was holding my weight. I asked my 250 lb co-worker to hand me up a piece of 2 x 6 and he proceeded to step on the bottom rung of the ladder sinking it into the mud enough to allow the top of the ladder to slide off of the bottom of the joist - "ouch" :( . Walked away with a couple of bumps and bruises and a little wiser about mud.
Soultrain, you are one lucky individual. I'm glad you're OK.
My best fall ever was only about 3 feet. But I was doing 100 mph at the time. Walked away from it. Still can't believe it.
Motorcycle?
Yep -- passing 55 mph trafffic without a vehichle is a rush.
Last Sunday. Finishing up sheathing on the roof of my new shop (6/12 pitch on the back; 12/12 pitch on the front and a 4/12 pitch dormer office on the 6/12 side). I was pushing sheets of OSB up the ladder to the 11 foot eave. As I walked up the ladder, when I had more than half of the sheet over the top, I'd heave it up to the 6/12 pitch, and let it slide down and catch on the ladder. I could then climb on up, grab the OSB and carry it up to the 4/12 pitch dormer.
Worked perfectly great until one sheet where I didn't quite have half way over the top. I pulled back slightly, gave it a good heave, and promptly lost my balance. I grabbed for the top rung, missed, and mainly fell/slid sideways down the ladder.
When I hit the ground on my side, I knew the OSB sheet was coming down, so I hunkered in as close to the ladder as I could. Caught it edge on scraping down the small of my back, and on the back of one bicep. I've got a bruise a foot wide all across the small of my back, and a real nice shiner on the back of my arm.
Other than that, I caught my breath, got back up and got the rest of the sheating up.
I don't want to do that again.....
--Ken
this is not a person falling, but still a fall.
about 15 yrs ago when i was a kid and first started out i was a helper on a commercial shop construction with 16ft walls on 16"ctrs. There were just two of us (not so smart) standing these things in 10' sections, bracing them up, and then nailing them together upright.
my mom, bless her soul, came to visit me on the site and walked out onto the floor. as she did it, the section we'd just stood up (not yet fastened) came undone from its brace and fell back. the carpenter shouted for her to run, she didn't hear, but did turn sideways and wound up getting her front trimmed by one stud and her back by another one with no harm done.
no more visits for me.
Wasn't me, but I saw it ...
Sitting on the porch of a big home under construction, eating lunch w/ a bunch of other subs. Roofer comes peeling off of roof over porch and lands in a pile on the ground in front of all of us.
This roofing outfit was known for hiring any warm body they could find. Kid had blue hair and looked like he'd just got kicked out of a punk garage band. Gets up off the ground and goes back up the ladder. Honestly don't know if he learned a lesson or not.
Bruce
Between the mountains and the desert ...
One fall was off an extension ladder. I was boarding up an opening where I had taken out a window, in a second floor bathroom. As I was pounding, the ladder must have been inching it's way out from under me, and it just kicked out.
As the bottom went out, the top went straight down the side of the building, until it went through the kitchen window. At that point I fell off and landed on my side. Legs and hips on concrete, upper half in fresh mud. Probably scared the homeowners more, as they were in the kitchen at the time.
There was a close call on a different place, working for a different contractor. I had hauled up 4 sheets of plywood, and set them on the roof deck. Had driven a 16d nail into the roof deck to hold the sheets while I got up on the roof. I climbed up onto the roof onto the stack of plywood, and the sheets began to slide because adding my weight bent the nail over. So as I tried to get off the plywood I just was sort-of running in place while the sheets flew off the roof.
Bowz
Accidently lost my footing on an 8ft stepladder once. Fell off the ladder but luckily landed on my feet...with an electric hedgetrimmer in my hand locked in the on position. Gave me quite a scare since it would've been real painful if I had landed on the blades in the off position let alone the on position.
After that, I never lock it in the on position anymore when standing on anything other than firm ground.
Not quite as good as some, but frosty roofs haven't come up yet. This was October in MN, which can get frosty in the early morning but often pretty quickly sunny and warm. Garage roof was shingled, one side facing East. Still working on the attached house roof, walked up the east side garage roof...no frost...across the peak right onto really thick frost that had been in the shade.
Slid down on my butt just like on a playground slide, off the edge and landed on my feet in fairly soft dirt. Nothing but feet hit the ground.
years ago during construction of a nuke plant in louisiana, a contractors college kid was working cleanup. he was on top of the containment vessel or some other tall hollow structure, cleaning up the forming material. he picked up the edge of a piece of plywood and walked under it to stand it on edge. the plywood was there to cover a hole in the roof, and the kid fell some huge distance to the concrete floor below.
i remove a floor furnace in my hallway, and my brother was over helping with the remodel one weekend. he decided to clean things up and picked up the 3/4 plywood in the hall, which covered the furnace hole. as he walked under it, he fell through the floor furnace hole, onto the ground below. the floor was about chest high, so he got a raspberry from his ankle to his underarm on the rough ends of oak flooring.
A buddy of mine was doing some soffit work. He had foam boots on the top of the ladder to protect the house, and those were resting on the fascia. As he reached the top of the ladder, he realized that it was only the top of the foam boots on the fascia, and not any part of the ladder inside. What brought the realization home was the ladder falling inward past the fascia, and the bridge of his nose hitting the fascia's bottom edge.Andy Engel
Senior editor, Fine Woodworking magazine
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value. --Robert M. Pirsig
None of this matters in geological time.
One more not-so happy ending story about open holes for the stairway.
I was remodeling a bathroom and the homeowner was on jury duty. The case being tried was a GC being sued for not having guardrails on the stair openings. The insulation company owner was directing his employees and stepped back into the hole.
He went from the second story to the basement, hitting a brace in the basement and breaking his back. Permanently paralized. Halfway through the trial the case was settled out of court for $1,000,000. the homeowner said it was a good move by he insurance company, as the other jurors felt that they would have recommended a larger settlement.
Bowz
1974 - 2x12 scaffold plank. As a 17 year old, working for grandad... Siding the gable of a 2-story. While installing a piece over the attic gable vent, the plank split, next thing I saw was the bottom of the vent at eye level... How did that get there? I do remember hitting the ground and a sore pinky finger. Two years later found out I'd broken it.
Worst story_ the bosses kid (not grandad) (age 16) went hang gliding off the top of a 10/12 pitch two story using a 4x8 1/2 inch plywood as his kite. Landed on one leg stiff at the knee. Worse than it sounds. Still can't run 15 years later. I keep my teenagers on the ground...
If I may, as a private home owner with do-it-yourself tendencies, tell a three part story that includes my worst fall (that I survived):
It was New Years Day several decades ago (when I was younger and more foolish) that I set out to construct a Rhombic antenna inside the attic in order to receive an AM radio station some 60 miles away. The Rhombic shape and the precise aiming of the antenna required that I attach the points at the lowest points of the rafters just above the ceiling beams. After spending an hour in this cramped space with my face down in the blown-in insulation (cellulose), my eight year old son popped up at the top of the pull-down stairs, exclaimed "Cool", and began to step out onto the ceiling space. I jerked upright, yelled "No", and immediately stepped between the beams. Down through the ceiling I fell with enough blown-in insulation to cover my older son's bedroom in several inches of the magic ingredient. I landed half on and half off of his water bed. My wife, bless her soul, took me by the hand, an led me to the shower--closing the door behind her.
After cleaning up, I re-entered the family room to note that the Christmas tree was still not taken down. I crawled under the tree to disconnect the electrical cord and the train. However, being a little bit more rotund than I rememberd, I knocked the tree over on the brick fireplace breaking 80% of the ornaments. My wife took me by the hand and led me once again to the shower to wash of the glass fragments.
After cleaning up once again, my wife insisted that I get into the bed and simply watch the remaining football games. As I got comfortable, I put my hands behind my head and my elbow knocked the glass of water off the night stand. Unfortunately, my wife had placed her most recent water color painting propped against the wall behind the night stand. The water flowed down the painting depositing the new colors onto the carpet below.
Sleeping hogtied is not that comfortable but, I guess, is better than in the dog house where I belonged. And, yes, I still am a do-it-yourself person around the house. I just plan better.
You may stop laughing now.
Enough, already.
I'll be over there when you can talk again.
no, I think I'll keep laughing for awhile...LOL
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that was a pretty good story
You can't make this stuff up. And you wonder where script writers get their material. LOL
your wife must be a saint.
or a glutton for punishment.
the story was great, tho
I've never had a fall worth noting, but there are 2 that I encountered recently that were pretty amazing. I work on our city fire dept. ambulance, and was the medic on these two.
First one was a guy that was roofing a 2 story home, and threw a pallet off of the roof. There was some strapping on it that caught him. The pallet took him down too. He landed on his feet rolling backwards onto his back. The ground was a slightly soft grassy surface. His only injury was a sore heel on one foot.
The next was a student at one of our two local universities. Apparently they were having a little drinking party on the roof of one of the campuses 3 story (high commercial stories) dorm buildings. It was was just plain stupidity. A student jumped due to others below telling him that they would catch him. They didn't. This landing was also on a slightly soft grassy surface. He only broke his ankle. He was so drunk I don't think that he realized his ankle was broken. He had no other injuries though. Pretty good outcome considering the liklihood of death from that height.