I spent the late hours of Saturday night sitting in an ambulance with blood streaming down my face and dribbling all over the floor and my clothes with the EMTs working to seal up the gash on my head while outside in the 11F air flames licked the sky from a two story house. How did I receive this terrible injury, was it from rushing into the house to save some child? No. It was because I was stupid.
We were called to aid our neighbors to the south 10 miles battle a housefire in town. Water freezes quickly in temps as cold as they were last night and while we do our best to blow our lines out and the firebarn is heated, we often have problems starting to pump water in cold weather. I was blessed to be the truck operator last night on the pumper. Once the truck was positioned so our tanker could hook to it, we pulled hose, engaged the pump, I pulled the valve to charge the hose, and nothing happened. STRESS!! Nothing spells stress like a house fire and a fire truck that won't pump water. 3 of us worked feverishly trying to make the truck pump while the guys on the ends of the lines, not knowing our issues, screamed "water, send us water!!". We managed to get the front valves to blow water, so I decided we should break loose from the front crosslays and attach the lines to the front valves....I couldn't break the hose at the outlet because it was frozen, so in a fit of swearing I grabbed a line still on the truck and jerked with all my might to pull it off to break for extra hose, in the process bringing the nozzle down hard on my head... not a big deal, had my helmet been on my head instead of laying on the fender of the truck. I tried to ignore it, but when blood started splattering on the ground the deputy sheriff interjected, "you better go to the ambulance".
I note the messages to farmers from your HSE when I log on. I am one of those farmers probably like many of you, I often think that I can't have an accident. I have had a number of little accidents over the years, almost always from not paying attention, or doing something I knew wasn't that safe. Losing your temper, even slightly, is completely human,but it can lead to really bad results. I am just fine, I am going to have a 2 or 3 inch scar down the middle of my head, and I lost alot of my remaining hair. It could have been worse, and it was 100% preventable. I had the proper safety gear, I just didn't have it on. That 2 seconds I saved by not putting the helmet on(I had every intention of putting it on once the hose charged) was pretty much negated by the 30 minutes I spent in the back of the ambulance. So was the 1 or 2 seconds I saved by grabbing the hose and pulling it as hard as I could,had I calmly climbed on top of the truck and pulled it off like a sane person, I wouldn't be typing with a throbbing head this morning.
As farmers we deal with dangers every day, we get complacent and often we simply forget how dangerous our jobs are. We deal with machines and animals much more powerful than we are. The temptation to cut corners to save time is with us everyday, often we do things that really aren't safe, but we have always gotten away with it, so we continue to do it. I posted before that in the area I consider to be my community, we have lost 2 teenage boys in haying accidents, 2 grown men in silage cutting accidents, 2 killed pinned by tractors,one killed in a PTO accident. Outside of ag we have had one killed on a drilling rig, 2 in an oilfield explosion(cigarette touched that off they figure), a couple oilfield electrocutions, just in my lifetime. This in a 9 or 10 mile radius in an area with a population of maybe 3000 people.
I am not a safety expert, but I would say there are two crucial elements to safety....paying attention to what you are doing, and keeping your cool. My big scar will remind me forever, all I will need to do is reach up and feel it to remember a cold January night when I ignored alot of what I have learned in my 14 years of fire service and my lifetime of farming. My thought to all of you is to figure out a way to remember to be safe without incurring a scar, or something far, far worse. Saving a week of time is not worth the risk of losing a limb or a life, or even a half pint of blood. Remember that, especially you younger guys like Matty(not picking on you, you just leap to mind). I was drilling post holes one day with a young helper about Mattys age. David was great help, but he didn't ever pay attention to anything I said. In spite of my warnings, he continued to brush up against the PTO on the digger...in the blink of an eye he was shirtless. I would love to have a pic of him bare chested with eyes as big as half dollars. It was literally in the blink of an eye,it could have just as easily wrapped him around the shaft as his shirt. BE CAREFUL everybody, those are my words to live by, the blink of an eye is all the time it takes for serious or fatal accidents to occur.