By R. Bruce Wright, CPCU
It’s not every day that we get such a vivid reminder of how things can go wrong as I got recently while making a consultation visit to a cooperative in our national program. Here’s the story of that visit, and a lesson from which many of our program members can learn for free. It did cost one co-op a bit more.
On a recent visit to an insured member of this program, I was sitting in the co-op boardroom meeting with the General Manager and the Safety Officer. My purpose was to update statistics, learn more about their safety and loss prevention programs, and share some ideas we have learned from others, as all Sandean Consultants do each year. You have likely had a similar visit from one of us within the past 12 months. After we had been talking for almost an hour, the ringing of the conference room telephone suddenly interrupted us. The GM smiled to me apologetically and picked up the receiver. In moments, his face took on a serious expression. When he hung up, he turned to me and said that he was sorry, but he had to wind things up quickly, since he had just been advised that one of the cooperative’s radio towers had fallen. Of course, we wrapped things up immediately and the three of us drove out to the site.
The tower in question had been in place for many years on a leased piece of wooded property, well back from the county road, and was accessed via a dirt road made just for this purpose. When we arrived, the 300’ guyed tower was completely down, as can be seen in the photo below.
The tower had “accordioned” when it fell, with only the top 100’ section falling off to the side into the woods. As you can see in the photo, there was a radio building at the base of the tower with an attached fence enclosing the tower base itself, and a large cleared area around the entire location. Guy wires were strewn about the entire area, with at least one looped up over a nearby power pole, but happily enough not in contact with the primary.
We set out to discover what had happened and got the story from a somewhat shaken, and very lucky, line worker. This worker had arrived at the tower around 1:00 PM and was waiting for his partner to arrive. At about 1:45 a logging truck drove down the dirt road from the woods and turned around in the clearing next to the radio building while the lineman was outside, walking to his truck. (This is the white service truck at the left in the photo above.) As the logging truck completed its turn, and began to head back to the nearby logging site in the woods, the lineman heard a sharp “twang” and turned to see that the truck had snapped a guy wire with the rear upright on the semi-trailer. The tower at first seemed to sway slightly, and then it rapidly began to drop straight down, with guy wires flailing all around. The driver took shelter behind his truck and was lucky enough to avoid any injury, although the truck sustained a broken windshield and several dents from the whipping guys. The tower somehow managed to fall parallel to the radio building, and only the fence took the blow of its fall.
This is not the end of the luck involved here. In fact, the reason the lineman was there in the first place was to climb the tower and place an additional antenna on it at the 250’ level. If his partner had arrived as planned at 1:00 PM, you can guess where he would have been when this incident took place. This next photo shows where the 250’ level of the tower ended up. That’s it there, just about 10’ into the trees. It seems certain that had the lineman been on the tower he would have sustained serious if not fatal injuries. In this case, his partner’s being late was a lucky break indeed.
You may be asking yourself just what the lesson here is for your cooperative. Well, for one thing, now it is clear why we ask you about your towers, whether they are guyed or free standing, and if they are enclosed by a fence. In this case, a chain link fence enclosed the tower base, but the guys were anchored well outside the protected area. The nicely cleared area around the radio building was just the thing for the logging company to use to turn its big trucks around in. Maybe you too have remote sites like this. If so, do you know what they may be being used for? Do your fences enclose the guy wires, or just the tower bases? If the latter, you may want to rethink your approach.
And what about the towers at your offices? Are they guyed? Inside the fence? Most are, but let’s think a bit about this aspect of the problem. Just where in the yard are these guys located? Is it possible, or maybe even likely, that your drivers pass near them, or even back their bucket and digger trucks in the vicinity? Could they hook a guy wire? And, what is at risk if your tower falls? Perhaps your buildings, your vehicles (or your employees’ vehicles), a fuel pump or even an above ground fuel tank are in the fall zone. Or worse yet, your workers in the yard or your members in the parking lot could be at risk.
Take a look at your towers and any guy wires. All tower and guys should be secured against both public access and accidental vehicle intrusion. The loss of only a single guy can unbalance the load on a tower and bring it rapidly to the ground. This case is the proof. Take the opportunity learn from this incident for free, rather than from your own, more expensive, experience.