Tragic Deaths in FL Keys

[foszoe]

Three Florida Keys utility workers die in wastewater trench after descending into manhole that had poison gas. | Bradenton Herald

Don't people use canaries anymore or is PETA that powerful?

 

[citizenkane]

They make a test machine that alerts to the presence of poison gas as well as other potentially dangerous environments, no canary needed. The idea is to stay out of the manhole and put the device down there to test the atmosphere.

They also make portable blowers that will purge the air down there in case any gas has built up.

Very tragic but likely very preventable.

 

[Cameramonkey]

They make a test machine that alerts to the presence of poison gas as well as other potentially dangerous environments, no canary needed. The idea is to stay out of the manhole and put the device down there to test the atmosphere.

They also make portable blowers that will purge the air down there in case any gas has built up.

Very tragic but likely very preventable.

TOTALLY preventable. My company deals with this daily. Portable atmospheric test gear, blowers to provide an abundance of fresh air, emergency winch, PPE, and working in teams.

This should not have happened. fails on multiple levels.

 

[actaeon277]

The problem is, people don't take safety seriously until AFTER fatalities.
I see this at work all the time.

Blast Furnaces have bad problems with CO, and it's bad enough to kill.
So, they take it VERY serious.

I work at the Caster, where we only have a small problem with CO.
So people don't take is serious.
I get a call to check out CO alarms, 9 different alarms in 9 different locations in a building the size of a mall going off.
And they want me to "fix" them. Uh, hello? Do you really think 9 different alarms in 9 places, off 9 different power supplies all failed, exactly the same way, almost exactly the same time (within the same 1/2 hour period)?
Duh, Blast Furnace "burped" and put a cloud out the size of a city block.

 

[actaeon277]

I can't find the video on YouTube. But we get shown one, I think it's a shipyard, but I could be wrong.
Worker after worker goes down to see what happened to the previous guys.
Last worker finally gets help.
I think 2 of the workers were father/son.

 

[tmschuller]

We just bought a new "sniffer" for work . We do Confined spaces training and have all the equipment. We have sewage lift stations.... yeah.
We are now doing training/rescue exercise with the fire department next week and this story was brought up. Sad and preventable.

 

[femurphy77]

I've been on my guys to follow procedures and hear the usual excuses. I sent them a copy of this story a couple of days ago and they seem to take it a little more seriously now. No pun intended but these guys were in way over their head; dependent on which story you read they were working on paving and decided to take a look to see why the road was sinking in the area of the manhole.

 

[Nazgul]

These accidents are very avoidable. I worked at a large winery. Fermenting grapes, up to 50,000 gallons, release a significant amount of CO2. Safety belts, sniffers, and air quality testing were mandatory.

We used sulfuric acid to reactivate some of the reagent towers. I was the designated safety man if we had to enter the acid tank. The primary weighed 100 lbs, I am much larger and could one hand him out if necessary.

Full suites, belts, ropes, sniffers, and ventilators were employed.

Don

 

[actaeon277]

These accidents are very avoidable. I worked at a large winery. Fermenting grapes, up to 50,000 gallons, release a significant amount of CO2. Safety belts, sniffers, and air quality testing were mandatory.

We used sulfuric acid to reactivate some of the reagent towers. I was the designated safety man if we had to enter the acid tank. The primary weighed 100 lbs, I am much larger and could one hand him out if necessary.

Full suites, belts, ropes, sniffers, and ventilators were employed.

Don

With proper training, equipment, and attitude they are easily preventable.

 

[Heavy]

H2S is scary stuff. I've not heard of levels that high with that fast an effect in a while.

I was told a story of two brothers (here in Indiana)doing some sort of work for a smaller town on one of the towns lift stations. They worked all morning on the bottom floor, I was not told what type of work though my guess is on a pump. After lunch break was over the first brother climbed the ladder down to the bottom floor, making it some way down and fell the rest. The other brother seeing it took chase after him. They were both found dead at the bottom after not reporting in at the end of the day. My guess again, is that they took a pump off line and went to lunch without bolting a blank and the H2S in the line starting filling the bottom floors while they enjoyed their lunches. Feeling safe, as they were down there all morning, they didn't realize the danger.

I've climbed down into plenty a wet well and lift stations, much less man holes and trenches. I've had training, and I guarantee you it'd be a cold day in hell when I wouldn't instinctually go in after a buddy in harms way. I can't imagine the hell it'd be to watch your friends and co workers die in a damned hole.

 

[Bigtanker]

H2S is scary stuff. I've not heard of levels that high with that fast an effect in a while.

I was told a story of two brothers (here in Indiana)doing some sort of work for a smaller town on one of the towns lift stations. They worked all morning on the bottom floor, I was not told what type of work though my guess is on a pump. After lunch break was over the first brother climbed the ladder down to the bottom floor, making it some way down and fell the rest. The other brother seeing it took chase after him. They were both found dead at the bottom after not reporting in at the end of the day. My guess again, is that they took a pump off line and went to lunch without bolting a blank and the H2S in the line starting filling the bottom floors while they enjoyed their lunches. Feeling safe, as they were down there all morning, they didn't realize the danger.

I've climbed down into plenty a wet well and lift stations, much less man holes and trenches. I've had training, and I guarantee you it'd be a cold day in hell when I wouldn't instinctually go in after a buddy in harms way. I can't imagine the hell it'd be to watch your friends and co workers die in a damned hole.

HS2 is nasty. In the oil business (refineries, terminals etc) my company goes to, what seems to me, extreme caution at first. But we have been shown some videos of guy walking and falling over dead due to HS2. Just about anywhere in our terminal, besides the loading rack, 5 gas monitors are mandatory. Get caught without one and you lose your job.

 

[Heavy]

I never thought about H2S being a problem in the refinery biz, and I know what you mean about all the meters and feeling like the extra steps to avoid the gas being a hindrance on the daily tasks. It's of course well worth it in the end.

When I started that type of work, the guy "training" me would toss his lit cigarette down into what ever our work environment was. If no explosion then it was safe! I guess all he was concerned about was the LEL's. So when the actual training and safety measures to avoid what happened in FL were implemented it was/seemed like an excessive joke! Of course we all know now it's not a laughing matter. Oh and the joker who trained me was finally fired after he gave the company plenty of chances to do so.