Not sure if this was familiarity breeding contempt or a momentary loss of concentration, but it frightened me afterwards.
Delivered a 20 metre mobile phone mast to Belfast this morning, up in the hills overlooking the coast, on a slope that was too much for me to even deploy the crane. A mobile crane was onsite to offload me and build the mast, so I put my slinger's hat on to make life easier. These masts are essentially fabricated tapered multi-sided tubes that lock into each other by virtue of the taper and their own weight. The riggers wanted the base section on the floor first, so I slung it and got the crane to take the tension. With the chains tight, I moved out of the way towards the end of the "tubes", half standing and half kneeling on the end of the other tube.
As the crane took the weight, the timbers under the upper tube gave way and it slid back down the trailer towards a short platform body I'm carrying for tomorrow's job, helped by being on a 30 degree slope, and in less than a heartbeat I moved my leg out of the way. One second later and my right leg would have been crushed flat between the tube and the headboard of the short body, as per this shot:
Considering that I bang on endlessly about keeping safe, making sure you have an escape route, and not putting yourself in harm's way, I fell a long way short of my usual practices and standards today. Waiting to board the ferry back to Cairnryan at the moment, and I can't help but think that for the lack of a couple of seconds thought, I might quite easily have been killed...
Delivered a 20 metre mobile phone mast to Belfast this morning, up in the hills overlooking the coast, on a slope that was too much for me to even deploy the crane. A mobile crane was onsite to offload me and build the mast, so I put my slinger's hat on to make life easier. These masts are essentially fabricated tapered multi-sided tubes that lock into each other by virtue of the taper and their own weight. The riggers wanted the base section on the floor first, so I slung it and got the crane to take the tension. With the chains tight, I moved out of the way towards the end of the "tubes", half standing and half kneeling on the end of the other tube.
As the crane took the weight, the timbers under the upper tube gave way and it slid back down the trailer towards a short platform body I'm carrying for tomorrow's job, helped by being on a 30 degree slope, and in less than a heartbeat I moved my leg out of the way. One second later and my right leg would have been crushed flat between the tube and the headboard of the short body, as per this shot:
Considering that I bang on endlessly about keeping safe, making sure you have an escape route, and not putting yourself in harm's way, I fell a long way short of my usual practices and standards today. Waiting to board the ferry back to Cairnryan at the moment, and I can't help but think that for the lack of a couple of seconds thought, I might quite easily have been killed...