Safety Consulting & Training
On-Site and/or On-Line

It saddens me to hear about accidents - This one happened yesterday:

Joe Gaire, 52, of Freehold, New Jersey, suffered a serious injury at 4:45 p.m. after getting his hand caught between a roller and cylinder of a press that was being set up for printing. The employee was reaching up “to grab something" when he was caught in the machine. Gaire was undergoing treatment at the hospital on Thursday night, and his condition was not available.

If you know printing, you know this accident should not have happened. I wonder what Mr. Gaire was thinking when he reached in the machine.....I wonder what the mode of the press was at the time(running, inching, stopped); I wonder whether he chose to not activate a stop-safe button; I wonder if he was working alone or with a partner; I wonder the extent of his injury....

Given that Mr. Gaire is in his 50's, he likely has plenty of experience with his machine. Studies reveal that "We tend to perform more unsafe acts when we are tired, frustrated, angry, in a hurry, or distracted". Events like this remind me how important it is for us to really take time to focus on any decision that can affect safety, especially if we are not having the best of days.

One man is dead and two more were injured following an accident at the RockTenn paper mill in Hodge, Louisiana.

All three were contract workers hired to clean out a vat of chemicals.

An employee of Deep South Industrial Services, died in the accident. A second Deep South employee was transported to a local Hospital and later released after being treated for minor burns. The third man, who was employed by Pulp Mill Services, was airlifted to a burn center in Shreveport. His condition was unknown late Tuesday. A VP for the employer said “They entered into the tank to do work when whatever happened happened”.

The Hodge Police Chief received a call around 10 a.m. for assistance in a confined-space rescue operation. A fire and rescue services group was called in to assist in the operation. The director of corporate communications for Rock Tenn said “An investigation is underway as to the cause of the accident. At this point, we can’t speculate as to the cause”.

I was a Process Engineer in paper mills for five years. I've entered many confined spaces and I am blessed to not have experienced an injury with these entries. In this instance, a firm was contracted to clean in a tank. According to the firm's website, they have been in business for 60 years, and have a strong focus on safety, including confined space entry. The full article said there was no explosion, and that the tank had several inches of liquid in it. I'm guessing the burns mentioned may be chemical burns.

We need to "make sure all the potential hazards of a confined space entry are considered and that appropriate preventive measures are included in the planning and CS entry permitting process". This includes addressing mundane items such as slip & trip hazards. I'm curious whether the company considered erecting a platform over the liquid for workers to stand on, or whether they were walking on an uneven surface that they could not even see below the liquid.
"When accidents occur, we need to carefully research the situation to really understand root causes". In this case, some of the questions that come to mind might include the following: Could one of the three men have been assigned to be the attendant outside the tank, but entered to assist in a rescue before others arrived? Was anyone at the plant assigned to be available to assist in emergencies? Did they consider planning for a "non-entry rescue"? Did they consider pumping out more liquid prior to entry and during entry? Was the "host" paper mill involved in the planning? Was the PPE appropriate for the job? Were all the pipelines to the tank properly double-blanked-and-bled of fluids in-between?...