Somebody / Something ever Save Your life???

In another thread I made a comment about just having bought a new carbon fiber hard hat for work. And I stated that I didn't mind spending money on quality safety gear, especially hard hats, because one saved my life one time. I thought the back story of what happened might be worthy of a thread.

About 30+ years ago I was out of college about two years. I was working for a heavy construction company on a college expansion project in Wyoming. When the job finished I got transferred to a bank world headquarters building in Troy, Michigan. I transferred in as a senior layout engineer (I'd been working in construction for most of my adult life). My job was to make sure the building (all 12 stories) was in the right place and was plumb and square as it was erected. Without going into a bunch of boring details, this was a very complicated building (think- 1/4 of a pyramid, stair stepped, laid out on a 45 degree angle and all clad (inside and out) with zero grout line granite, adjoining an underground parking garage laid out on a 30 degree angle from the main building). It was a layout nightmare. My role involved walking structural steel with survey instruments as the steel was being erected to verify everything was correct. The tolerances for this building were impossibly tight.

One day I was walking across the basement (2 floors below grade). I had a theodolite on a tripod over my right shoulder. All of a sudden something hit me in the head...HARD! The impact knocked me down (and I dropped the instrument), and it knocked my hardhat off. Felt like somebody walked up behind me with a sledgehammer and whacked me as hard as they could. The noise the impact made on my hard hat was so loud my ears were ringing, but I was otherwise unhurt. Whatever had hit me had made a loud THUD in the dirt a few feet from me, but I couldn't see anything.

My first thought (after making sure I was okay) was..."Jeezus, I just dropped a $15,000 dollar instrument...I hope it's not damaged!!" So, I got up, grabbed my hard hat, put it on and picked up the instrument and set it up to check it. It's weird how your mind works when things like this happen. As I'm standing there the gravity of what had just happened struck me. So I went looking for the object that hit me. I could see where it had hit the ground, but there was nothing there. At first I thought maybe it bounced, but there was nothing nearby, so I kicked some dirt away from the little impact crater. Sure enough, buried in the dirt there was a 1" diameter bolt about 4" long with two large nuts threaded onto it! HOLY S#!!! The bolt with the two nuts on it weighed easily near a pound (possibly more). I looked up and the only work going on above me was way up on the 12th floor (14 floors above me). That bolt had fallen 14 stories before it hit me, and could easily have killed me!

My hard hat had saved my life.

After I saw the bolt I took my hard hat back off and examined it. There was about a 2" long gouge on the back right side at about the halfway point between the brim and the top. The gouge started off skinny and got deeper. At the deepest point the gouge actually became a hole in the plastic of my hard hat and you could see light through it. The corner of the bolt or nut must have been what impacted my hat.

Throughout my career I have always kept all my hard hats and I have them lined up on a shelf in my office. One of the hats in the center is turned around backwards. It shows the scar from that bolt hitting me that day. Makes a great conversation piece when someone asks why one hat is turned around like that.

There's a Part II to this story, which will make some really angry. Maybe I'll tell it if there's any interest. In any case, next time you think a hard hat is too hot, or too uncomfortable...look up, and remember this story.

You can’t tease a second part of the story and not share! Let’s have it!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Cliffhanger thread nooooooooooo!

Please, more sir.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Twice...1. Nam vet pulled a fridge offa me after falling together from the 2 story.
2. Emergency Commander sent EMS for me in AFIB (by phone all day checking on me..in denial)...he received an award for saving me

I spent a couple of years in a hard hat at work. I would make my workers wear them if there was a need, but most times hardhats were more apt to cause an accident than to save you when working in my line of work. Safety glasses were always required by me though. I supplied the workers with them or they needed to have the shatterproof glass on their prescription.

Some of the safety stuff they say we should use actually makes the job less safe.

Tell the story, you have me hooked..,

And yes twice, once in a sheet rock accident and 42 year ago I was working on a new hospital project as a second year apprentice. I got hit on the hard hat with a large nut one of the iron workers dropped. I’ve spent years in Bullard hard hats, recently changed to DAX. Did it save my life? Who knows, it’s a proven fact that I’m hard headed.

Okay, so Part II

After the incident I went back to work as usual. I was a little sore (my neck mainly), butot all things considered I was fine.

Around lunchtime I went over to the project offices to grab my lunch. When I went inside there was a big meeting going on in the PM's office, and it didn't sound like it was a good one. I could hear some loud angry voices. I looked outside and saw the car of one of the big bosses from the main office. Something must be going down I thought.

I went to my desk and got out my lunch. Right about then the chief engineer (the guy I worked for) walked through. His name was Dick (and he lived up to his name too). He looked pissed, so I didn't say anything to him. He goes in his office and starts slamming stuff around. I asked him what was going on. Turns out some apprentice iron worker on one of the bolt-up crews thought he'd make some points with the journeymen iron workers by playing a "little prank" on a "white hat". (Engineers, Supts. and PM's wear white hats) Seems the guy thought it would be real funny if he innocently screwed a couple nuts onto a bolt and dropped it off the steel 14 floors up. Only problem was, someone saw him do it. He said it knocked the guy down, but by the time they got over there to look he was gone. Said he was carrying something.

Without saying anything I showed Dick my hard hat. "Was that YOU???", he asked. I told him it was. I should have kept my mouth shut. Next thing I knew I was being dragged into said "loud angry meeting". I got in big trouble for not telling anyone...and everyone...the second it happened. I got grilled for about an hour over it. Then they made me go to the hospital to get checked out (notice the priorities...first chew your ass out for an hour, THEN send you to the hospital). I told them I was fine, but it didn't matter. And, it turned out I really was okay per the hospital.

After that the whole incident just made me mad every time I thought about it. The iron worker got fired immediately and suspended from the union. Dick my (dick) boss gave me hell every day for about a month over it and dreamed up every possible S#y assignment he could think of to have me do. I finally wound up dragging up from the company over that and some other stuff. Just a bad deal all the way around.

a reply to: Nickn3

Huh...that's too funny!!! I hadn't even read your reply yet when I typed Part II. And it's even more ironic than that.

I always wore Bullard hard hats (swore off those crappy MSA hard hats that companies hand out eons ago)...and guess what the new one I just bought is??? Yep...a DAX!!

a reply to: rickymouse

Depends. It is true that some safety procedures complicate a work task and may increase the probability of an incident. Fall protection is a great example of this. The big difference is the severity of the injury. A fall with no fall protection is often catastrophic or fatal, whereas a fall with fall protection may only result in some minor bruises.

ETA - How could a hard hat "cause" an accident??? I'm having a tough time thinking up an example.

Supposedly, a few months back, I was in a wreck.

I "came to" back home after finishing several of the typical chores that would need to be done before sunset... and then called the wife for help.

two or three days later (20k in bills) I was finally let out of the Gd hospital.

Don't remember the incident- but I'm only missing about 20 or 30 minutes of memory.
A helmet would have prevented everything but the busted shoulder... according to the doctors. Certainly would have saved me a small fortune, anyway.

sure would be nice to know what happened, though.

Been in the market for a good helmet ever since. Haven't found one yet... worse than condoms, the lot of them.

a reply to: lordcomac

Motorcycle wreck? Or what?

I good friend of mine in my graduating class went on to become an ER doc (head of UCLA Medical Center ER for a while). He told me something once which convinced me of the value of head protection. He said...the human body is designed with legs only so long, and the way the body develops it can only run so fast. The entire human anatomy is designed to protect the head from a fall ONLY going as fast as the legs can propel it. Any faster and the skull WILL impact the ground. It's all physics after that. Because the majority of the skull is made up of liquid (blood), the skull impacting the ground is a bad thing because it creates a "water hammer" of sorts (i.e. the skull stops moving and deforms while the contents continue to move inside), then they ricochet back the other direction...causing even more damage.

The mental image of that was enough for me to firmly believe in helmets and head protection. Turns out, before he ever told me that, head protection saved my life.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: rickymouse

Depends. It is true that some safety procedures complicate a work task and may increase the probability of an incident. Fall protection is a great example of this. The big difference is the severity of the injury. A fall with no fall protection is often catastrophic or fatal, whereas a fall with fall protection may only result in some minor bruises.

ETA - How could a hard hat "cause" an accident??? I'm having a tough time thinking up an example.

I had one worker on the roof who had a hardhat on one day and his hat fell off and scared the guy coming up the ladder who then fell off. He twisted his ankle, but did not need to go to the doctors or anything, but had to do twenty minutes of paperwork. Another time a guy ducked and hit his hardhat on the rafter in the attic, the added height he wasn't accustomed to. Then he lost his balance and put his foot through the ceiling. He scraped his leg going through the plaster and lathe. Maybe if a person was born with a hardhat they would get accustomed to ducking lower.

Those harnesses on roofs are dangerous when roofing, the ropes are like ball bearings and I have myself almost gone off of the roof, you need the harness and rope if you have ropes all over the roof. Setting up roof jacks on the roof edge saved me. On top of that, to connect the harness so the workers can go on the roof, you have to get to the peak, that makes things complicated, I owned the business, I did not need to have all the safety gear, guess who was the one who set the rope tieoffs at the peak. To get from one side of the roof to the other, it means the rope will let you go off the roof in some places. I do believe in safety, but some times OSHA rules are a little overly protective.

Choosing to sit in the passenger seat instead of hopping in the turret as I usually liked to do saved my life. Not so much the specialist who normally manned that position.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Or loosing a nut in your case. I have been working as a window cleaner in Berlin (not my best times) and I had a course about these safety gears because I was doing the windows and ceiling lights on penthouses.

How long do you have if you hang in there? I remember the instructor sternly saying, if you hang in there (with line on the back) in some places, it can be too late until someone is getting to your help. That is why he advised us to never forget the little rope that you make into a loop and step inside so the blood can flow again / breathing is possible.

Was it 10-15 minutes?

My Brother (biological brother).

He fished me out of the Orange River as I was being carried away by the stream.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk


Divine intervention at least 4 times.

Dogs Betty & Karma from an intruder.

My ex husband, Heimlich, gobstopper damn near killed me.

My sister crashed her motorcycle 3 years ago, a car cut out in front of her. She walked away with one broken bone in her wrist. Quite miraculous.