Incident Prevention Magazine

The essence of safety is preventing incidents from having the opportunity to occur. When they do occur, it is usually the result of one or more safety systems failures. Failures, however, are the seeds of opportunity. Incidents provide us with opportunities, albeit unfortunate, to improve our safety systems and prevent future incidents. The process used to identify what improvements are needed is called Incident Analysis.

Despite the economic downturn, the wind energy industry is growing rapidly and establishing itself as a prominent, sustainable solution that will help generate enough power to help meet current and future demands for renewable energy. Global leaders recognize that wind power can and will be one of the largest sources of new electricity generation. The United States is taking a strong position in this industry; the Obama administration is supporting wind power with an aggressive renewable energy stimulus to back it financially and foster continued growth within the industry.

The Department of Labor, Bureau of Statistics, says tower climbers have “the most dangerous job in America.” Steve Fleming, Director of Antenna & Tower Training at Safety One International (www.SafetyOneInc.com), says that on average accidents on towers and cranes lead to 25 deaths per year. Fleming further suggested that close to 80 percent of the deaths at communication towers over the period of 1992-2001 were attributed to falls.