So I was digging around out of curiosity about ladder and roof fall death statistics.
Put simply, I dislike working on steep roofs or tall ladders. And after working around the Fire Departments, I find I am pretty crazy, but very safety conscious - everything becomes calculated risk to me.
I have this weird habit, maybe it’s leftover from firefighting training or I don’t know what - but when I do something that seems to be high risk, I end up playing worst case scenarios through my head and think of how I would react to that scenario. Recently I had to climb on a roof with a weird roofline with a really steep edge where I had to dismount the ladder - which then I had to climb over - then smoothed out to a nice walk - nothing too crazy, but enough to make me think that the scenario had a greater risk of slipping (and of course my head goes into imagining the fall… head exploding on the edge of the swimming pool concrete below… My imagination runs wild…)
But then again back on subject - I was digging around on statistics and came across this quote from an article in australia:
“Of the 112 workers who died from a fall from a height in the four years 2008–11, 76% died due to head injuries, some in combination with major injuries to other parts of the body.”
Now this is speculation, but realizing extreme height falls and other bodily injury come into play - lets say wearing a helmet would only save 50% of the strictly “death due to head injury & combined with other factors” patients… That would mean that percentage wise just over 42 people would have survived the fall deaths out of that 112 workers who died from falls… That’s huge.
Anyone think of using a climbers helmet etc when doing high ladder work or working on a roof with sketchy windows?
I am considering it… Cause concrete is hard, and on those days I work alone and have to get on a roof - it could come in handy.
The article from Australia is here: http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/SWA/about/Publications/Documents/812/Falls-from-Height.pdf